


The God of Rain

by Phase7



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Also Hal briefly, Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Cunnilingus, Disembodied Limbs but for Sex, Domestic Fluff, Fisting, Grand Theft Angkor, Loss of Limbs, Magnetic Shenanigans, Multi, Multilingual Character, Multiple Orgasms, Sam gets cucked and loves it 2025, Squirting, Vaginal Sex, War as a Business, Xmas Supply Drop 2017, chapter titles will either move you to love or hatred nothing in between, hella consensual everything else, mentioned offscreen rape, only the choicest and most subtle of memes, the Hyakunin Isshu
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-14
Updated: 2017-12-14
Packaged: 2019-02-14 15:39:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 26,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13010898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phase7/pseuds/Phase7
Summary: "A novella entitled the god of rain, or the rise and sudden departure of Monsoon, of the Winds of Destruction, his professional life, his loves, and his losses, as told in admixture of dramatic reënactment, droll interlude, and erotic fiction."In other words, sex scenes between Monsoon and various characters, except Armstrong because I wanted to keep all depicted acts consensual.  Chapters with Pun titles have Porn.  The first chapter is hetero.A response to: "Request #144; anything involving Monsoon with Raiden and/or Jetstream Sam, please i need that #content"





	1. Phnom Penh Thot Me That

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ezra Shape (betweentheteeth.tumblr.com)](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Ezra+Shape+%28betweentheteeth.tumblr.com%29).



It wouldn't the first time Monsoon had engaged in sexual activity; being forced to suck dick by the gendarmerie had seen to that younger than he would have wanted even if he were gay. Trading oral for getting out of prison, or for his life if he were to be frank, had put him off of sex for quite a long time. Other people would reach for him, even the most beautiful woman, and he would see the thick hands of the very first soldier with dirt under the nails. He'd hear his mother scream, his father's head smash wetly against tree bark, and hear the monsters in the villages yelling at his family for having the audacity to be bad at farming even though they'd never learned how. He'd feel the pressure at the back of his throat, and wave the admirer away. Or he'd cut the hands off his opponent. There was always masturbation, anyway. 

But she was different. When they'd first met, it was in an abandoned Wat that the French hadn't looted completely yet. The light bounced from leaf to green leaf, from vine to grey stone, from gold idol to dark skin and black hair in dank ponytails. The air was wet like rain despite the clear skies strangled out by foliage. Monsoon had been sweating through his gingham shirt and second-hand khaki shorts and so had she. She had a rare long face unlike the apple beauties of Phnom Penh's billboards and side streets. It had that Cantonese-Cambodian look, like how mother was sketched in rough charcoal on ink-black memory. The golden garuda would sell for... enough for a year. Monsoon had a reliable contact with a client in Moscow who needed a grubby gun-hugger to do the hard work. She had one too, as was obvious from her hard black eyes. She wasn't clutching at the statue like a lifeline, but as an investment. Maybe they were both working for the same man who lived in that third floor apartment that smelled always of expensive foreign tobacco. One of them would have to kill the other for money. 

It wouldn't be the first time Monsoon had killed for money, including women. He reached behind his back for where the revolver crooked over his belt. He saw her put down the garuda. He smiled. Sure, he'd let her live if she let the statue go. He greedily looked over to the pristine and impeccable workmanship that sat on deeply cracked limestone. She cracked his head with a baseball bat. 

Again, the room smelled like cigarettes. Monsoon looked over to the window unhelpfully, and then to the other side of the room from the couch. There were four guys about his age loitering by the shitty apartment's one door. Right, he'd told them to come get him if he wasn't back in an hour. He felt the heavy bandage at the base of his skull. He felt the dull but penetrating ache. He knew that whoever fixed him up hadn't come cheap and he'd be feeling that financial strain for months to come. Perhaps he should have died instead. But all he could actively think of, the dopey smile returning to his chapped lips, was "What A Woman." 

Tbong. Her name was Tbong Meathu, the honeyed jewel. Her parents had named her imagining beautiful dances carried at perfect angles to tell their ancient clockwork stories, of home-cooked miniature eggplants over hand-rolled noodles and morning-glory with banana and coconut pancakes on the side, of silk and pepper and fireworks viewed from an expensive balcony. Tbong was an iron woman who made her life by bartering antiques, trafficking cut heroin she never touched, and killing any man who crossed her. With a baseball bat. Her hair was long only because she never found the energy to cut it. Her skin was a golden persimmon sun-dried to brown. Her hands were calloused, and her mouth tight, and her young eyes already creased by worry. She was perfect. She didn't even remember Monsoon when he tracked her down and tried to get her to join his fledgling "group." 

Then she did remember. 

"Oh, you're not dead? Your head's made of wood." 

Monsoon couldn't recall exactly what he said as a response, but it included sandalwood, and a nice poetic comparison, and Tbong not being outwardly impressed. 

"What if you join my group?" Tbong had said, motioning with her head over to the open and obvious stacks of cash she'd chosen to count right in front of him. 

"What if you give my group your money? We work together. I have men and guns." 

"You think I don't have men and guns?" 

"You don't." Monsoon had done the research. He knew Tbong mostly worked alone, with allies but no constant backup, and certainly no guards in the building where they were holding parley. She had a safe, and an old oak desk that once belonged to an embassy. Nothing else. Completely defenceless. 

"You don't either," Tbong replied as if she could read Monsoon's thoughts and was still unimpressed. 

"Yes I do. I have eight men, and a closet of guns." 

"Not right now." Tbong put down the cash fold. She brought her baseball bat up from behind the desk. Okay. So. Fair enough. 

Monsoon raised his hands, and his short dot eyebrows rose as well to plead with the woman. 

"I know men like you. You'll spend it all on prostitutes and gambling." 

"Actually, I have a plan..." Monsoon was smiling nervously, thinly, in treacherous submission despite his body drawing up to its full towering height until his head hit a hanging bulb. 

Tbong lowered the bat. "It had better be better than mine." She sliced her hand through the air in a motion for Monsoon to speak. He lowered his hands first, then set to sating her curiosity with his ambition. 

They married six years later after beheading the last gang leader of north side. They'd kissed over his still bleeding head, sworn to be engaged, and signed paperwork within the month. Neither of them had parents left to insist on a proper Theravada Buddhist wedding, but the one hundred and eighty men and women under their banner, those who held the highest rank, had insisted on the feasting and the garlands and the entire horrid celebration. That wedding night, Monsoon had felt sick to his stomach from palm wine, whiskey, bourbon, too much food, and those fat fingers with dirty nails that clawed at his eyes when he looked over to Tbong with her shirt undone. 

Since she was piss-drunk, Tbong slurred her way over to the bed, then to the chamber pot, then to the door to yell at anyone who'd try to "listen in," then back to bed. She fell asleep. Monsoon equipped her with her bat, replacing bottle neck with worn wound leather in her hand. He watched her sleep. Her figure squirmed under her clothes from fitful rest and the skin-wavering pain in Monsoon's drink addled eyes. He needed to sleep too, but his mind kept him awake and staring at her. 

He didn't regret marrying her. He was only reasonably afraid of her, and of that most of it was admiration. He wasn't afraid of her soft body. He knew he was drawn to its curves and protrusions, with every hard muscle and graceful dip filling his mouth and mind with golden honey just to think of it. He wanted to feel her all over, and bring her to orgasm in ways he'd heard of and read. He wanted to see her lost in sensation so that her sweat-painted face of pleasure would supplement the fierce one he'd memorised at the Wat. He wasn't afraid. He was hungry. But he couldn't act because he was certain that if she reached for him in lust, he'd think of soldiers hands; when she pressed his head to her shadowed lips there would be hard flesh in his mind instead; when she grabbed his skin and moaned in the way he wanted her to all he would hear would be sobs and screams and a burning poker down his spine again. He was afraid of being too broken to love her like he wanted to because he'd never tried. He'd never let anyone get close enough to even brush by the boundaries he'd built around sex to protect himself. 

Until she'd kissed him over the wet, cinnabar floor. The tiles had been brighter scarlet than his eyes could handle, glowing with light under the draining life. Nothing about it had felt wrong. Every bit of it felt right and made him burn inside with brightest red flame. Could everything be as wonderful as that kiss? 

Yes, it could. He could touch her breast. He did, and then felt appreciably awkward being a man just touching a sleeping woman's breast, married or not. He squeezed it anyway, and found the sensation to be most delightful. Tbong's bat shifted under his forearm as she shifted in sleep. He quickly withdrew his hand. He used that hand to masturbate into a sock then joined his wife in sleep. Tomorrow would be time enough after such a significant mental breakthrough. 

Monsoon was awakened by Tbong yelling at sparrows. The sparrows interpreted human noise as proof that it was Ululation Time Flock Cohesion Yay(tm), so redoubled their efforts to be loud. Monsoon kissed the base of Tbong's neck where it drifted into shoulder under rough mocha skin. He laid his left hand on her clavicle, the right arm craning around the pillow where her hair painted a bramble filled forest. Tbong stiffened for only a split second. Monsoon kissed that spot on her neck again. The sides of his lips curled up happily. 

"Good morning." As her eyelashes fluttered and shoulders rolled under his lips, Monsoon could sense that those words were only a stopgap to fill empty space. 

"We're married," he informed her. 

"We are." 

His hand softly roamed down until all four of his fingers passed over her left nipple, then let the thumb rest there. He cupped her breast and pressed on the nipple lightly, only to feel its small heft and softness. His fingertips drifted over muscles and ribs below. 

"I want to see all of you." 

"I think that's mutual." 

"You think?" 

"I reserve the right to regret it if you look like nothing." 

"I look like a man." Monsoon let go of Tbong's breast. He sat up, then straddled her wide bony hips and thick thighs. His hands rested on either side of her face, then down her clavicles, over her breast, pressing firmly down to her navel, then back out sideways. Their trail pulled away her unbuttoned men's shirt and pinned its open ends to the bed. 

"And that has something in particular to recommend it?" Tbong smiled up at Monsoon. Their hearts melted. 

"You're always so sassy. It's a good thing you found a man who loves that." 

"There are plenty of men who like that in a woman," Tbong shot back on cue. Then her fingers wrapped around Monsoon's right hand wrist. The bat tumbled to the floor. Her eyes blinked a sigh. "But you are the only one who would share my bed and let me wake up without being sore." 

"Uh?" 

"Sex. You're not an homosexual, are you?" Tbong's brows drew close. 

"No! I'd like to have sex right now, please!" Monsoon enthusiastically asserted his heterosexuality with a nodding head as red with blush as the cheque pattern on the shirt his fingers fiercely clutched. "Shit, why did I say please..." 

Tbong laughed. Her breasts bounced over her torso. She sounded like bells and sparrows. Her right hand hooked over the collar of Monsoon's t-shirt and pulled. Soon, it spread out over the scars over his abdominal muscles and dark nipples of his pecs. The touch was appreciative. Her fingernails raked over his hipbones then scratched at the very top of his pubic hair. 

"I like that you only say please to me." Tbong's voice was low. Monsoon felt and saw their chests rise in matching deep breaths. 

"I like everything about you," Monsoon admitted with softness he regularly quarantined. Their lips met, softly, together. They held each other's shoulders. Their hips touched and rolled. Their hair became a mutual mess. They lost their breath, forgot about it between battling teeth, and found their tongues instead. 

Monsoon's mouth nibbled carefully down Tbong's body. His nose brushed over her beautiful flesh and inviting scent. He licked where he pleased, and sucked wherever that drew a small moan. His hands played raucous accompaniment in a harmony of touch. Her body's shape pleased him wherever he grabbed it, and he hoped that his delighted her where she squeezed into muscle and scraped along bone. 

Tbong spread her thighs. Monsoon's hips fit between them. His hand inverted slowly along her hip in the curve of a crescent moon until her coarse hairs crept between cuticle and nail bitten short. His long hand spread out through the hidden forest. She made a soft sound, breathing out, breathing in, both. His middle finger met a slit, soft and wet. He bent down to kiss her again. She aggressively welcomed it while his finger pressed down in her folds to find her hole. The undersides of his knuckles drummed over her mons and then clitoris while he fumbled. She squeaked, her hips bucked, and she then held him close until their chests and teeth met hard. 

Grinning in victory, Monsoon quickly pushed off her chest and hips. His body fell upwards, an acrobat toppled from a building with flying hair and straining legs denied purchase. Lust made him weightless, and his hand drew out of Tbong's clothing to hover near her face with honey-wet pianist's fingers. 

Both hands clenched suddenly, grabbing onto her belt loops and undergarment elastic before she could switch from admiring his memory frozen in mid-air. He'd fallen back onto the wheezing and bouncing bed, all bony kneed and sharp elbowed. He tugged her pants up in a flash: over knees, over calf, over ankle, onto the floor. He felt her legs afterward, replacing cloth with kisses and caresses. He nipped her ankle bone, and raked up the smooth under-flesh of her thigh, and ran his cheek over her unshaven shin. Then he fixed her with sparkling black eyes that smiled so thin they were brushstrokes. His eyes got closer. His long chin, his straight nose, his mouse tooth eyebrows, his hair spooling past shoulder and onto the taut rise below her navel. His eyes met hers, then they looked down. Her heart beat fast. As always, she read his intention. 

Monsoon had never given head to a woman before, and he was not letting it stop him. All of it felt right to him from the very first lick. His nose nuzzled into her hair and folds. His tongue found her entrance easily. His hands worshipped her thighs and hips and the sensitive flesh that faded liminally between them. His thumbs pressed against her labia. He memorised her origami body. She moaned instructions, then only inchoate sounds. He tried his best to suck and twist and lick and kiss, in variety, with sensitivity to what her tightening nails said felt good or not. 

As her moans flowed from her wet ruby lips so did her honey. It was thick and slippery like mango juice, but with the sweet and sour taste of a tender mangosteen. And like the princess of fruits, Tbong had been tough to crack, yet so delectable to eat. He mouthed and touched her, and licked her juices even as her thighs shuddered against his cheeks. The taste was addictive, but her pleasure more so. Monsoon looked up after her legs had stilled, to see her flushed face over the double rise of her chest crowned with white morning light like snowy mountains. Her nipples stood out much more enticingly than mountain peaks to claim. Monsoon reached up to thumb at them. Tbong moaned, eyes closing slowly while she arched her hips. 

"Did you finish?" He asked hopefully. 

It took a while to open her eyes and answer, and when she did she spoke with all the pity of Lokesvarak: "No. But it felt very good." 

The secondary sentence did nothing to rebuild Monsoon's young pride. Tbong's leg bent around the back of his neck. He heel brushed along his spine on its way out. The touch left pebbled flesh in its wake. 

"How about you show me what you have?" Tbong suggested. 

That led to immediate improvement in the room's mood. Monsoon wiped the glistening sheen from his mouth with the back of his arm. He reared up on his knees. He shoved down his pants. Tbong's eyes widened. Her lips twitched. Her mouth hung open. 

"So?" Monsoon prompted. 

"You have to stop wearing loose pants." 

They both chuckled. Loose erogenous flesh bobbed in unison on both their bodies. The laughter and motion felt good for both of them. 

"Impressed?" 

"I had no idea that was there." 

"And now that you do?" 

"The birthmark is strange." 

"Oh the BIRTHMARK is exceptional." Monsoon squat back on his heels, crossed his clammy arms, and chose to look at the ceiling. Tbong rapped his left knee with the arch of her right foot. 

"You know I'm teasing." 

"Mmm." Monsoon kept looking upward. 

"I'm not sure if it will all fit." 

Monsoon looked downward, brows bundled up to shadow his playfully disbelieving stare. 

"Honestly," Tbong emphasised with her voice and her hands that sketched out in the air the relative proportions involved between Monsoon's crotch and hers. "You're very tall on top of... everything else. I'm not sure it will all..." She finished her sentence with more motions. 

"Want to try?" Monsoon stopped pretending to be offended. His arms unlocked. 

Tbong sat up. She closed the distance between them for a kiss. Her hand encircled slippery stone-hard flesh. She breathed in while holding his bottom lip gently between her teeth. He smelled like simmering kebabs, hardwood bourbon, and a mounting storm. Her wrist twisted into the torsion of pumping up and down. Monsoon groaned out a sound of thunder that split her spine. His big hands supported her sides then buttocks as she rose on tottering knees. Their heads canted into their slow but hungry kisses. She could barely knit her nerves together after the shock of his arousal ran through her. 

Atop the creaking bed, they both held out admirably. Monsoon grew from moans and growls to short shouts. Tbong clung to him while she twisted inside and melted all over. Boneless, she let Monsoon lay her back onto the bed as he reached his peak. He lifted her by the tops of her thighs, slammed her hips towards his. She was so warm and soft and slickly tight in such an unexpected and miraculous way that his body and mind could hardly stand it. The strength in his arms as he thrust into her from an unexpected angle sent her over the edge. Her entire core tightened when she screamed. His warmth shot inside her, accompanied by a startled yell. 

Monsoon looked down at Tbong, his wife, their eyes meeting and staying a while in the timeless mist of their conjugal moment. He truly loved her, and he needed to tell her that. Her mouth was opening though. She wanted to say something while she had his attention. He'd come in her. Was that a— 

"I love you, Phirun."  
Tbong said his name. 


	2. The Strong Prey upon the Weak

Naughty boys from Krong Ta Khmau, just south of Phnom Penh along the banks of the Bassac, had long been a thorn in Monsoon's side. They were a large gang, a definite rival, but his own criminal empire kept them at bay and out of his territory. Recently, they were growing vocal again, and were backed by annoying excerpts from economic theory. All along, they had a radical new plan and vision for Cambodian crime, aiming to not only extort citizens, but foreigners as well. To be fair, Monsoon didn't care about foreigners either and was fully in support of fleecing tourists. That was one arm of his operation: dragging tourists in for gambling, prostitution, illegal international goods, and overpriced amenities. The hotels were in his pocket. But those naughty, naughty boys... 

Krong Ta Khmau's gang had a radical new idea to offer to tourists, with significant evidence for its economic viability from Thailand: underage prostitutes. It wasn't unheard of. But Monsoon's holdings had been doing just fine with regularly aged prostitutes, and didn't need to fight that many legal battles because of it, after certain confrontations with each police captain. Prostitution was a mainstay of any criminal empire, and the health and welfare of its workers thus important. Only foolish pimps thought they could get away with treating women like trash: any tool if misused breaks down. Further, it was so much nicer to collect the management's cut of profits from a woman or man who did not want to kill you and who was not suffering from late stage syphilis. Common sense. Beyond common sense lay simple standards. Monsoon knew he was a very bad man, and his sins weighed down his soul such that it would rotate in and out of scummy mortal lives forever, but he did have standards. Child prostitution was so unbelievably heinous that it was below his standards. 

Police were ineffective and corrupt. That meant that within his holdings, Monsoon was king and his standards were law. The boys from Krong Ta Khmau were pushing north into his territory and trying to change his laws. This wouldn't do. 

In the years since Monsoon and Tbong had wed, they had become astoundingly powerful, and rich, and respected. They had also grown old. Tbong still had her long black hair, but brushed and conditioned to look fine outside of fights on purpose. She'd cut it short in 2005, just for a change. Together, they'd decided that although it definitely looked fun and kicky, longer was better. Mostly Tbong hated dealing with upkeep on short hair to keep bangs out of her eyes. Monsoon admitted he liked to press his face through her hair, and while hidden there, kiss the back of her neck. Speaking of hair, Monsoon had not been surprised to go white at 30. He'd heard it passed on his father's line, though his father had not lived long enough to experience the transformation. Monsoon enjoyed how it made him look more wise and intimidating. So he let it grow however long it wanted, except for a few crops thanks to gum or just barely dodging a machete while pinned down. 

They had one child, a daughter, Meas the golden one. After the birth, Tbong decided to never do that again. Monsoon got a vasectomy. Meas lasted until 9 before she figured out that her parents were mafia dons instead of CEOs. From the inside, it seemed very normal. It continued to be normal as she studied hard, learned English from her âu instead of French from her mê, and attended university in America. She studied obstetrics and gynæcology, and was planning to return home to open up a clinic for underprivileged farming communities along the eastern Tonlé Sap flood plains using Monsoon's money. Her parents were proud of her philanthropic spirit, though a bit sad that they couldn't pass on Phnom Penh to her. She was kind enough not to crow about how she was turning their dirty money into help for the poor. 

Meas was completing her residency at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Idaho when it was bombed by Christian fundamentalists. That's when Monsoon loaded his AK-47, strapped his sais behind him, and Tbong hefted her baseball bat in one arm and a case of grenades in the other. It was time to defeat the naughty boys once and for all. Meas would have wanted to stop child prostitution. 

Monsoon, Tbong, and their 180 loyalists stormed down the water into the engorged Bassac. Their boats thundered through churning waters, motors and propellers kicking up froth to match their dark frowns. They passed by countless paralysed buddhas on the riverbank, enticing people to throw away everything they ever loved and embrace a salvation of only nothingness. The stone faces in alleyways and footsteps silently begged peace in a world where only war spoke for souls. 

The rival gang had been expecting them, but not so early. The groups met at the zone between the the city, the highway, and the dock. The rivals wore expensive shoes and haircuts, trying to look smart despite displaying the dirty flair of highschool dropouts. Monsoon had gone into battle many times before, and against tougher, older opponents. He was sure he'd win against these children. 

An older white man with a thick body and thicker armour stepped out in front. That was new. Though it figured that the opponents had Western help to sell Cambodian children. He could tell that was exactly what Tbong was thinking from her growl. She pulled the tab from a grenade, and kept her finger over the ignition. She waited for the right time to start the attack, judging from the heat of the air, her husband in her side eye, and the opponents before them who crowded in bravado behind the fat foreigner. The white man slowly drew his horrendously thick sword. Monsoon and Tbong locked eyes for a second: knife to a gun fight. 

"Howdy," the foreigner said in weird English. 

Tbong threw the grenade. Monsoon and his gang began shooting. The other side opened fire. Boxes exploded, and bullets showered dents of lead into shipping containers. Stray shots pinged off of street poles. Shoes and sandals scuffled unheard over the asphalt and concrete. The deafening grenade's smoke finally lifted, revealing the foreigner still standing in place, surrounded by both wounded Cambodians and those in the midst of reloading. 

"Head," Monsoon said to Tbong. She understood he meant to aim directly for the foreigner's uncovered bald dome, the most obvious and unprotected target. 

The foreigner was on top of them faster than humanly possible. It occurred to Monsoon that he was one of the enhanced soldiers that rich private armies put out. Monsoon's gang started to fire again, while bullets came from the other side as well. While Monsoon was in the midst of working out that his opponent was a cyborg, said cyborg uncoupled his crossed swords, pressed one thick blade each under Monsoon's armpits, and then cut through the bone and ligament like butter. 

Shock set in blessedly quickly. Monsoon was aware his arms separated from his body. He was aware that his body fell to the ground, and his sais slipped loose. While his heart pumped overtime and his brain screamed, he saw Tbong swing her bat at the foreigner's head. Part of the man's armour shunted off of his body as a shield and knocked the bat away in two splintered pieces. Then another threw Tbong's body with it. Bullets bounced off of the black plates the blocked the sun over Monsoon, and even tangled in the horrid man's immodest trench coat. Not a one hit his head. He was invincible. 

Tbong swung again using the metal grenade case as a weapon. It was sharp-cornered and heavy from only missing one grenade. The foreign man batted at her with another piece of armour, but she dodged. Then he stuck her through the stomach with a sword. Then he laughed so hard his stiff body jiggled. He was talking proudly of himself in that obscure accent, every other word an obscenity aimed at the people nearby and the concept of grammar. That meant he was distracted. 

Monsoon forced himself to look away from his dying wife. He kicked off his right sandal. He opened his big toe from the rest of them, then slid his foot onto the handle of the Sai so hard that asphalt scraped his tough sole's skin. The thin pointed end of it embedded in the webbing of his toe. This was good. Pinching down with force he'd never before asked of his toes, he rammed his leg upward. There was a seam between armour plates that was only visible from below, showing dark denim underneath. The sai slid right through it and the prongs bit his groin. Right where it hurt most. 

The foreign man wasn't impressed, though he was surprised when he looked down. Monsoon couldn't understand why he wasn't in pain. 

"Ya wanna lose yer legs, boi?" The foreigner asked. 

"No." Monsoon figured it was a rhetorical question, but his brain wasn't working at full blood capacity. He pressed his bladed foot in with more force. "You will lose yours." 

"Funny." The foreigner grabbed Monsoon's foot, removed it and the sai, then held both aloft to get a good angle for cutting off the leg. He cut off the leg mid-thigh, simple as a finger breaking a stream of smoke. The other leg came off as well. 

Both femoral arteries were now open, and Monsoon felt faint. As he lay on the ground, he could see the people above him and around him, a mass of bullet-ridden corpses in the street. It would have gone differently if the white man had not been there. People were fleeing in the boats he had taken down. He didn't blame them. This was a very good fight to retreat from, even if only a minute or so had passed. Monsoon could not retreat. He could roll into the river and drown. That was one option from his dying brain. The other option was to somehow fight because, honestly, screw that white guy. 

Monsoon flexed his core muscles and rolled. The big man was limping away, thinking his job complete. Monsoon rolled faster, leaving a spotty red line behind him. He reached another crack in the man's armour, right between foot and shin. Monsoon bit down on the white man's ankle so hard both of their bones would crack. 

The foreigner looked down at Monsoon again, this time annoyed. He tried to shake Monsoon off, but his ankle was trapped by the thrashing tenacity of a Siamese crocodile. The one Cambodian left fighting was just being a nuisance. At least this nuisance could be turned into entertainment. There was always something very funny about a quadriplegic he'd created. But he had a schedule, since this minor job wasn't supposed to take so long, and he'd already sent in radio confirmation that it was taken care of. Back to annoyance, and a sigh. 

"Boi, ya wanna lose yer head?" That was definitely a rhetorical. Like giant scissors two blades collared Monsoon. Monsoon thrashed, unwilling to make his death easy. The blades sliced through his lungs and spinal cord. 

Monsoon wondered how he was still alive. He'd been an idiot and screamed. The scream had made him fall off the foreigner's foot. There was talking that buzzed around like a fly. He couldn't focus on English words then. But he finally placed the accent. It was like that man in charge from M*A*S*H. Horse Hockey. Monsoon felt himself be picked up. 

"Yeh, ah'm bringin' him in. Sundowner out." 

Yeah well screw you, Horse Hockey.


	3. It Will Not Let Up until the Clouds Are Clear

Anæsthesia only broke over Monsoon occasionally. He always saw white, and in between curtains and eyelets of it, sometimes there were colours and form. Beeps screamed louder than the empty hall voices. He couldn't stand the beeping. It made him feel like he could never get to sleep even though that's what he craved until the circles of sight swirled too fast. Then he did not exist. It was not sleeping. He saw green and brown pass by, and blocks of grey. He heard the incoming seashore breathing for him. He saw legs in pantyhose. He felt sheets pulled out under his shoulders and nowhere else, hands turning his ribcage every 4 hours. He saw an entire operation on his body while he lay paralysed. The room was teal, the face masks white, the blood red. 

All of the shining grey metal headed toward his eyes. Something flopped away like a liquid teardrop caught in air. Two shining almonds of ice, like they were floating in air. Doctors talking lowly, disappointed. The world was a bleeding watercolour constantly in motion while he was trapped in a frame. Something else glinted, then blocked light above him, like a tea scoop. It didn't hurt at all when he lost his sight. He recalled that there were no pain receptors in the eyes. He couldn't see for a long time, but the voices looming above him were always pleased. 

Perhaps his sight had returned sooner. He had not been awake for it. He awoke suddenly, in full charge of his faculties. He tried seeing. It felt like sight wasn't working because he could only stare ahead. He couldn't blink. His head was extremely heavy, but not from the haze of drugs. There was something on him, like a steel washcloth conforming to his scalp, hot plaster taking a bust. He wanted to dart his eyes around the room, and achieved only the slow pan of a cheap security camera. He remembered he had no eyes. Yet he saw. 

he tried lifting his head. There could be a mirror nearby. He had no arms with which to sit up. Of course not, they'd been excised. His legs too. His hips, his lower back, his navel: he felt nothing. He wiggled his shoulder blades, but like a butterfly caught in a net under his skin, that did not do much to move him. But he eventually felt a bump where tiny lumps of his shoulder and upper arm met the mattress below. He imagined how he could move about the world like this, as some grub with only two stubby limbs, constantly staring up at the sky. Or like that head from The Thing, painted now vividly in his memory. Empowered by imagining himself a monster, he wriggled body and head until he gained traction against the pillows behind him. He could see to the end of the overly long hospital bed that held him. 

No mirror waited there, only a large and broad man. Monsoon first thought that it had to be Horse Hockey, but the man had hair. He wore a business suit too, but the jacket sat over the back of a chair, and his shirtsleeves were rolled up past vast muscular forearms and a golden Rolex watch. Though it still took effort to move his sight separate from his head, Monsoon was pleased that he saw in great detail, and had no trouble distinguishing what he saw. 

"You're back," the man said, real casual. He pushed up squashed oval glasses on his face. "You speak English." 

That wasn't a question. Monsoon couldn't play dumb. 

"Yes," Monsoon answered. 

"You remember me?" 

"I've never met you before." 

"You have," The man said with more smugness than reassurance. "You just don't remember. It's a side effect of the drugs. You've been keeping the doctors busy. Of course, the drugs stop today, so if you're in pain, you'll have to suck it up like a real man." 

"Have we spoken before?" 

"I said we'd met, didn't I?" The man sneered briefly, then shook his head. 

"I mean..." Monsoon spoke before completing his thought with calculation. "I do not remember your name. If you could refresh my memory?" 

"Last time you said 'enlighten me.' Do you read the dictionary?" 

"Yes." It was a help in translating written English, where Monsoon's spoken business English had faltered. Magazines came off the dock second-hand: Wired, Scientific American, two year old Nature. Journals and textbooks passed the time on busses, the hours waiting to make a hit, the silence of nights without blood and vomit. 

"Disgusting. I don't need a nerd. I need a fighter. You speak anything else?" 

"Cantonese." 

"Chinese?" The man's voice rose dangerously, as if Monsoon were admitting he was a dirty commie. 

"Cantonese, sir, not Mandarin." Monsoon reasoned that this man was a sir. 

"You read those moon pictures?" 

"No, sir." 

"You read English?" 

"Yes sir." Monsoon wasn't about to throw back the logic of reading the dictionary implying he read English in this man's face. Everything about the mountain of white flesh said that he was the guy in charge. He could crush Monsoon easily. 

"All right. Good." A smile came to the man's voice and squared face. As if he could forgive everything that disappointed him before just through this one fact. Perhaps reading English made him a valuable fighter. Such capriciousness was dangerous. 

"May I ask your name, sir?" 

"It's Armstrong. Senator Armstrong, of the great state of Colorado." 

"Are we in Colorado?" Monsoon asked. He was aware of what a senator was, like the highest official to be bribed, but was more interested in discerning his location. 

"Delaware," Armstrong answered. 

Not that it helped in the end because his grasp on U.S. geography was a bit lacklustre. Monsoon had no idea where Delaware was. But this time he would keep his mouth shut about his ignorance. 

"Thank you, sir." 

"You're right, 'thank you, sir.' I saved your life," Armstrong declared with a mix of pride and menace. He paused for effect. Monsoon breathed heavily, too wary to immediately fawn on him as a saviour. "You've got some good physiology there, son. You're one of those special people who takes real well to surgery. Our type of surgery. And on top of that, they say your brain plays nice with magnets. We lost eleven people already on that body. A hundred million each. Now since you're living thanks to what we learned from those failures, you'll be indebted to them, won't you?" 

"Will I, sir?" Monsoon's mouth felt dry. Money was something he knew intimately. He could tell where this was going. He counted up how much money he had, in Riel and Dollar and Yuan. In tangible assets too. 

One thousand one hundred million would be hard to cover, if not impossible. That would be... five percent of Cambodia's gross national product. He figured he was worth about five percent of Cambodia. One billion dollars. He'd pulled off similar cons. It would have to be a con. Get a few hundred million by auctioning off the remaining relics, plus forgeries, sending the bidders into a war over multiples of the same item. Target China by selling offshore space for island building after shaking down some real estate boobies. There was a hundred million in cocaine, three in heroin, if he took a few debts to people he really didn't want to contact. But they would want the debt paid in blood, not money, and that he could provide. Dig himself out of this... he could dig himself out of this... 

"We own you," Armstrong said calmly. 

That cut Monsoon through like the thinnest bamboo. 

"Once you put on the rest of your body, that's a four billion dollar debt," Armstrong explained. "All that money in R&D, plus physical therapy, plus keeping you a secret. It's not easy on us. It costs money. All that money comes out of my pocket, and flies off into the wind, poof, like I never had it. What's the use of making a billion dollars on private security if I waste it on prototypes for your body?" 

Four billion. Monsoon couldn't get four billion dollars. He couldn't even get in debt for four billion if he gambled. No one had that kind of cash liquidated. He'd only played at being that kind of rich man, scrambled for it with the rest of the rats who lacked royal blood. He couldn't drop a crystal chalice without worrying it would shatter, without thinking of the consequences. His entire life was consequences, weighing down on his head, making it hard to see and hear, thick dirty hands and his mother's screams. 

"Yeah, you get it," Armstrong said. He was pleased by the defeat he saw in Monsoon's slack mouth. "But don't worry, it's not hopeless. You're going to work for me. Killing people; it's a good business. We'll dock your pay, and put that against the debt." 

"How much do I get paid?" Monsoon asked that within the nanosecond Armstrong stopped speaking. The senator's eyebrows rose. 

"You're the first one to ask that." 

Monsoon didn't want to think about what kind of person got saddled with billions in debt, was told to kill, and didn't ask what the pay would be. Killing was business. That was a natural fact. But even when it was fun, it wasn't easy. It needed to be compensated in cash or kisses, and Monsoon wasn't here to kiss Armstrong. 

"How much, sir?" 

"We'll discuss that later," Armstrong said. He stood from the complaining hospital chair, straightened his sleeves, and put on his jacket. Once buttoned up, he looked like an official properly. He was preparing to leave, but dallied at the doorway. He gave one last fond smile at his science project linked by tubes and wires to the bed. Monsoon dared to look back at him from behind the naked apparatus of his new visual system. The Cambodian had closed his mouth to try and not look stupid— he had dark lips, didn't he. "There's one more way you can make money, lots of it, against your debt." 

"Yes?" Monsoon prepared his résumé mentally. Cooking the books, perhaps, or theft, or drugs, or organ harvesting. Monsoon was prepared to curry favour with his captor and ingratiate himself into the power structure in any way possible. 

"You ever sucked dick, son?" Armstrong smirked. 

Monsoon's mouth fell open again. Shit. He was going to have to kiss Armstrong. He recovered. He took a deep breath and tried to balance the metal, rivets, and circuit boards piled on his head with pride. 

"As a matter of fact, sir, I have." 

"God damn pansy." Armstrong sneered. 

Monsoon's chest physically hurt from the realisation that he had severely miscalculated the situation. He tried to think of some way to save it. Would Armstrong feel compassion for the fact he'd only done so under duress? Monsoon had a feeling Armstrong completely lacked compassion. 

"It's not as fun when you're an actual cocksucker." Armstrong brushed lint off of his jacket pocket as if it could brush away homosexuality. But Monsoon brightened to hear those words. "Fruits run Hollywood, the media, convincing boys to act like weak kneed women. You one of those Thai Ladyboys?" 

Monsoon thought about his answer before giving it. Armstrong obviously had a bad case of the Not Gays. He was still the only way out of this. 

"No, sir." I mean one, I'm Cambodian. "I've never worn a dress in my life. I'm married." The present tense came out before memories of Tbong bleeding on the blade could stop it. 

"Great," Armstrong chirped. "I'll have my tailor size you once your body comes together." 

For a suit? Had he chosen the right option? "Thank you, sir." 

Armstrong chuckled. "You can thank me on your knees under my desk. I'll see you in a month. Welcome to Desperado" 

For a dress. Armstrong was in a good mood when he walked out the door. He almost filled up its frame. And that made Monsoon, who'd bumped his head on a few too many doorframes, feel exceptionally small. 

This wasn't about suppressed homosexuality. Armstrong wasn't gay, maybe wasn't even bi. Monsoon realised it didn't matter. This was about control. 

But if Armstrong thought he could control Monsoon by sexually humiliating him, it would prove only his delusional self-pride. Monsoon would work his way up the pecking order once again. His deep anger would fuel him like the sea to a storm. He would walk by Armstrong's side, hear the man's unfiltered thoughts, and thus build the power to humiliate Horse Hockey and anyone else who'd stolen lives from him. For Tbong, for his fighters, for his dealers, for his rollers, for his runners, for his working ladies, for his accountants, for his brokers, for his thieves, for every business paying protection to him, for every official who bowed to his will, for his revengeance. He would not let himself forget their sorrow. He would not accept complacent peace. He would not let his dreams disappear. 

That's what he thought before the magnets went in his head. 

They threw him in a sea of pain, where thoughts had a sickly pink form. 

He moved. He walked well. He fought. He danced to Armstrong's side. Magenta glass dug into his feet at the bottom of the deep Tyrian ocean. 

It wasn't true that man had a soul, or a self, or anything beyond a body and the emergent properties that made accidentally a mind. Thinking about being Phirun led to pain. Placing value on memories made them stab deeper. There was blood in the tiny bathroom sink. He couldn't hold onto who he was and who he remembered being at the same time. The more he scrambled for revenge the more his desires ate into his muscles. It became hard to fight while he planned to undo it all. He didn't answer to his new name fast enough. He gagged when thinking of Armstrong. He started to lag in favour. All the halls and corpses flew by him before he could touch. His heavy head hurt too much. Four hundred, five hundred, seven thousand, nineteen thousand dollars of rejection drugs to treat a word the doctors murmured and Armstrong screamed. He couldn't scratch all the memories out where they itched under his skin because it was all made of metal. The little bugs eating his brain had to come out. He spit up fuchsia foam before drowning. 

Anatta! Dawkins! Arahant! Descartes! Avihimsa! Diamond Dogs! The memes that form me remake me without conscious thought! I'm a slave to what's come before! There can be no past when time is just one direction of vibration, no layers, no past to exist at all! I see it all and it means nothing! No good, no evil, no future, no permanence, nothing but strings connecting experience to sorrow! I don't need any of it! Don't want anything! Nothing! 

White sunrise swept the rosy sea free of blood. Monsoon floated to its surface. He was free. 

Monsoon was so good at killing. He earned thirty thousand dollars. He was a success of science other than the nanomachines. He earned eight million dollars. Radio in his helm the old fashioned way. He earned forty six million dollars. Armstrong trusted his judgement now that he was over those silly growing pains. He earned two hundred eighty million dollars. Other people rang up additional debt in repair/replace costs, but not him. He earned five hundred and eighteen million dollars. He smiled. Monsoon always smiled. 


	4. Well-Cum to Denver

Everyone knew that Samuel Rodrigues was a slut. Monsoon could tell it even while standing upside-down from a hangar's steel beam strut. It was definitely the way the man's hips swayed, and the definite, DEFINITE twinkle in his eye when he'd looked up. This was a man, Monsoon thought immediately, who would never fight his own clone. They'd go straight to option #2. 

Once Jetstream Sam deigned to join Desperado, he proved he was a slut by sleeping with just about everyone there, including support staff. Everyone knew what his genitals looked like. It became simply another piece of info on his medical sheet and bathroom walls promising pussy-ass and dick done dirt cheap. Just treat him like a human being and buy him a beer. And be okay with body hair, because he swore both sober and drunk to never shave. Mistral asked him how he fit into his enhancement suit in alignment with that declaration. Because maximal skin contact, chafing, inner seams, and all that. He cocked a scarred eyebrow at her and sarcastically introduced her to baby powder. She rolled her eyes at him and called him "putain." They slept together anyway. 

Monsoon was beyond actually judging anyone for being a slut. Sam being a slut was simply a fact about him, as descriptive and neutral as the colour of his HF blade (red) or his height in armour (195cm) or his nose-picking status (positive). There were facts about Monsoon that everyone knew as well, and probably regarded neutrally like the colour of the tags on his sais (red) or his height when contiguously magnetised (213cm) or his hip segment's genitalia status (negative). It was surely because of these neutral facts that Monsoon and Sam neither judged one another nor slept together. 

Instead, they drank socially together as an excuse to be emotionally vulnerable. Sam made a display of his emotions, while Monsoon listened. Their relationship was pretending not to be counselling but Monsoon was distantly gratified that Sam trusted him as a sounding board for fitting in at Desperado, as if siccing a Metal Gear on him had been a neutral act as well. Sam drank enough for a horse, while Monsoon couldn't drink more than a shot glass worth of beer or sake without getting alcohol poisoning. That was because all of his internal organs, which were still necessary to keep his brain alive, were cut to miniatures and stuffed inside his neck piece, including the liver. Sam understood and offered condolences when he learned about it. Really, they viewed each other neutrally. Everything was based on honest facts and ordinary social interaction for co-workers. 

Because in contrast, everyone Sam slept with in Desperado he sort of hated, and they hated him back. It wasn't a little family except for the mutual loathing part. Armstrong had them all there piled under millions of dollars of loans taken out on their lives. Except Mistral. She probably believed in him and whatever he was trying to prove. 

Everyone under Daddy Armstrong dealt with being slaves differently. Mistral went with aiming for being Mommy in the future except that the senator was already married. Not that that actually mattered to either of them. Sundowner enjoyed havoc, so threw himself into it with gusto. He even tried to bring others into the Spirit of the Season, as if genocide were Christmas. Khamsin wrote Harry Potter fanfiction and knit house scarves in this the year of our lord 2018 and was generally bearable unless he started talking about anything else that held his interest like Rick & freaking Morty. Sam had apparently just missed the death knell of Zephyr, who had built and cultivated the various bars at home base and on large enough vehicles. Sam drank to him when he thought about it; good on the guy for having an eye for aged liquor and art deco as well as claymores bigger than a man. There was an accountant who loved to golf. There were two cyborgs on engineering staff. The one missing a leg was a gardener on Instagram. The one who'd lost heart and lungs was apparently a Big Name Fan in American Wrestling Roleplay. The janitor was a woman who followed every Delaware sports team. Sam dealt with slavery by plotting against it when drinking with Monsoon and not even trying to be sneaky. Monsoon dealt with it by being neutral. 

Nothing hurts if nothing matters. Being hurt by something means you cared about it in the first place. So stop caring, and only do what you're told if you have to. Let there be nothing in life but the existence forced upon you. In neutrality you can see everything for how it is. If robbed of pleasure in life, if placed in a situation with no gladness, you can still feel peaceful satisfaction by being CORRECT. After years trapped icosahedral, Monsoon had grown a great new skill alongside his hard won techniques and scientific knowledge. Monsoon was always CORRECT. 

Yet again, Sam was sitting next to Monsoon at the hand-lacquered bar nursing some jack'n'coke over a glassful of ice. He was leaning over in Monsoon's direction, which wasn't unusual, especially lately. He was talking about the last mission he'd run with Sundowner in Indonesia. He was glancing repeatedly down between Monsoon's legs. He had kept scratching at his ponytail until he'd undone it. He rubbed his finger on the inside of his glass. The first time he pointed out how stupid it was and licked the alcohol off his index finger. Then he'd just kept rubbing and having to lick things off. He used Indonesia as a very awkward segue into So, Cambodia, Right? Monsoon knew then that he was correct about something the implications of which mystified him. It was true, but he shouldn't say it. If he voiced his conclusions, it would lead to everyone having a bad time. Well, he deserved to be burning in hell anyway. 

"Are you flirting with me?" Monsoon asked. 

"Eh?" Sam looked up so he could grab onto Monsoon with a heavy gaze under long black lashes. 

"You're flirting with me." 

"No." 

"Minuano." 

"No, I'm not," Sam almost laughed it off, his tone was so light. He leant away from Monsoon, placing his weight on his artificial arm just to prove how very much he was not flirting or desiring closer body contact with his drinking buddy. 

"Sam." Monsoon wasn't fooled. 

"I'm not flirting. I'm just curious!" Sam motioned at the fan shaped green light behind the square bottles of gin. His thighs spread and his feet wobbled just above the tile floor that had been stolen from an old pharmacy. 

"If you're curious, you should just ask things instead of flirting —with an idea." 

"What makes you feel good?" Sam had chosen not to play any more games after an hour of hearing his own voice. 

"For an example: this conversation does not." 

"Oh, what's the matter, boss? Do you not wish to engage in, eh, locker room talk?" 

"If you want to talk about what makes you feel good, you don't have to ask me first as a social pleasantry. I know you too well to be offended." 

"No, no, I really wish to know: what makes YOU feel good?" Sam leant forward again, closing their space. Ice chimed in the glass between them. Monsoon's abdomen shifted backward on the plate it shared with his hips, carrying all attached segments with it. 

"I apologise for assuming that you were using any sort of subtlety when flirting," Monsoon snarked. His hips and legs shifted backward on glowing magenta mist to meet his upper half. Sam's fingertips grounded his wavering body on the warm spot left behind on Monsoon's bar stool. His aquiline nose and curling brown-black forelocks were less than a centimetre away from the crux of his co-worker's chest. "I'm not interested in having sex with you." 

"Why not? You're handsome." Sam's breath filled in the crimson troughs cut cruciform before his warm lips. 

"You're drunk." 

"And?" 

"We're not in love." 

"As they say: what's love got to do with it?" 

"What is love? A chemical signal in our brains. Oxytocin and dopamine tricking our neural networks into arousal and fleeting pair bonds." 

"Yes, exactly." Sam held Monsoon's hips with big, strong hands that still held dirt under their fingernails. Two of Monsoon's thigh slices kicked up at Sam's wrists until they let go, then another two pressed flat against his palms magnet-first to push the hands away. Sam pushed back and hummed on the dangerous note between music and moaning. 

"Some of us need that illusion to get going because we're old and unlovable and don't have any flesh left to pester." 

Sam's hands slipped down onto Monsoon's knees while his own thick knees met the floor. His head rested on the old red leather stitched onto steel and rattan. His broad body radiated heat. his greasy hair that needed a wash shone green in the bar light like a gel pen had run aimlessly over black paper. His T-shirt needed a wash too, and a mend to the hole on the left-side seam. His generous ass lowered onto his heels; his leg muscles stretched out his yoga pants obscenely. He smelled like rum, cashews, sandalwood, and baby powder. It wafted up to Monsoon from the hot air coming from the heating vent below whose metal slats dug into Sam's bare toes. 

"I trust you," Sam said. 

At first Monsoon would have jumped to the conclusion that this was a love confession mangled by manly pride. He thought about it a little more while Sam's palms sweated onto the magnets of his knees and draw scintillations through the salt. Sam didn't love him. Sam felt love from him, incorrectly changing a lack of judgement and spite to love from within the twisted mirror jungle created by an environment of serfdom, murder, and lost hope. Sam was seeking one relationship more stable than lust and more equal than orders typed on a machine. He wanted friendship and he always played friends with benefits because orgasm pulled him through the nightmare that was life. 

"You want me to promise I'll never kill you," Monsoon concluded. 

"I can't ask that from anyone." Sam chuffed at the ridiculous thought. If anything, he'd prefer knowing someone he trusted would kill him one day. Weapons were made to kill. Samuel and Monsoon were made into weapons long before they were clad in iron. 

Monsoon thought about the situation for a longer time than before while Sam mouthed at every magnet embedded in his right leg. Sam's dark skin was lax and flush from alcohol, moving over the metal, mesh, and plastic with drunken slowness and sloppy licking. Sam's hands were attempting to massage pattern-forged muscles. His chest was hot, the wiry hair poking out from the shirt collar was brushing inside the leg's seams, and his burning thighs had encased Monsoon's right foot in pliant fat and rolling inguinal muscles. Sam was turning himself into a horny mess. It was playacting meant to please only the director. Being a slut made Sam happy. 

What DID love have to do with it? 

"All right, there's one thing," Monsoon finally said. 

"Yes?" Sam's rich brown eyes sparkled over white and neon green like a forest. 

"It will seem awkward and risible." Monsoon saw Sam's face shift to cover a twinge of uncertainty, so he defined. "Laughable." 

So Sam laughed. "It's sex! That is its very nature!" 

"That's accurate." A twitching smile finally pulled at the edge of Monsoon's lips. Just a bit. "We'll need a refrigerator magnet for me, lubrication, and a butcher's glove for you." 

"A butcher's glove? The thick kind?" Sam stood up, face already searching for components for sex like a horny hawk. 

"No, the long thin kind that reach up to the elbow." 

"May I ask—" Sam quirked his brow and opened his arms. 

"IF you like to be fisted." 

Sam's hands shot down into a stance of readiness and his booze-blushed face brightened even more. His perfect teeth lined up as he responded to Monsoon: "I DO like to be fisted." 

Monsoon slotted himself into the doorway, his mannequin outline filling in slice by slice. His right hand held onto the top of the doorframe so he wouldn't bang his head yet again. 

"I doubt we'll find all of that here." 

"Don't be so sure!" Sam jumped behind the bar and immediately loud bottles and glasses clacked against one another and against the metal and tubing of taps and tills. "You said that there was a wind here before me named Chinook. He enjoyed taxidermy?" 

Sam's thumb pointed up at the well mounted birds who still played out a scene at the far end of the bar. The 3-D painting of flesh and dried forest was a testament to Chinook's prowess, since thin bird skins were the most difficult to work. Monsoon nodded as his neck turned, then the rest of his upper body followed it like switching discs in a jukebox. 

"And you said that Chinook passed his things onto Zephyr?" Sam kept talking through his thought process. 

"Yes," Monsoon confirmed. 

"I am in Chinook's old room on this base, which means that their belongings did not pass on as museums. Nothing is left alone when Desperado needs space. So, where would Zephyr maintain the memory of his taxidermist friend, in a place which would not be destroyed?" Sam held up a bottle from behind the counter. It looked like yet another gin bottle to Monsoon. "And why is this formaldehyde?" 

"That's fine." Monsoon walked backward toward the bar even as his chest and eyes faced it. He grabbed onto the edge of the polished wood, then his head bowed down to look in the dark space between the taps where Sam rummaged. He body remained in place, the long arch up from floor to bar to green air caught delicately like the seafoam around a mermaid. His head meanwhile attached in between two chrome plated but pig-iron filled tap handles. Behind the bulwark of his red helmet, the remnants of his two dot brows knit together as they worked through the same logic as Sam. "You're not suggesting we have sex right here?" 

Sam tugged a small and cheap military grade metal chest out from behind some hosing. His smile said "Oh, Yes." Before his mouth did. 

One of Monsoon's hands slithered over the bar's lip, then summoned to box to itself. Its partner joined it to drag the box down in front of Monsoon's face. Sam turned around where he squat, still looking expectant and unperturbed. Monsoon undid the simple wire latch of the chest. Inside were various clamps and scalpels set onto cotton balls, plus a large syringe obviously not meant for anything but preservatives. Sitting on a tray above were two boxes and some pens. One box was Band-Aids, and the other long butcher's gloves. 

"I'm impressed. Your brain works better when your dick is using it," Monsoon said. He took out the box of thin gloves, then shut and latched the chest. 

"There is a refrigerator right over there." 

Sam flicked his thumb at the small fridge just opposite of them. A receptacle for milk and juice used in special drinks, and a canvas for various notes pinned in place by magnets. Three of them were thick balls of magnet covered by lady bug plastic shells in sizes Daddy-Mommy-Baby. Most were thin strips of mass produced magnetic substrate for pithy vinyl cartoons: Margaritaville, screwdriver drink with a screwdriver in it, don't bother mommy she's day drinking, Dan Backslide confounding those Dover Boys who drive him to drink, Caprese Boy, and some taxidermy jokes (well we both use alcohol) that were probably gifts between friends. 

Sam wiggled his brows and ears at Monsoon with expectant suggestion that he choose a magnet. The ears were a new talent Monsoon hadn't seen before. It figured though, since the Brazilian was so obsessed with being flexible and having muscle control. The more he thought about it, the more it made Monsoon smile. The more Monsoon smiled, the more Sam wiggled his ears. Finally Monsoon laughed. 

"You're ridiculous!" Monsoon set his rib segments and abdomen upside down on top of Sam's head like a hat. 

"Ridiculous and sexy," Sam retorted contentedly from underneath the heavy joke sitting on his head. 

It felt horribly natural for them to be trading physical comedy while crouching on the century old tile floor behind a tiny dark bar set into a dead end wing of a diminutive Delaware private military headquarters. Monsoon realised that he trusted Sam too. Not to not kill him, since they both knew they'd follow that order if given. Rather, while they were alive, they trusted each other as friends outside of work simply because they'd babbled at each other long enough and didn't hate the sounds they'd heard. Trusting others was a frail hazard. Friendship was a vulnerability. Yet only through coöperation could great things arise. 

"Now show me what a refrigerator magnet can do to you," Sam prompted. 

"Lubrication first," Monsoon retorted. 

"As if my ass needs any." 

The flat of Monsoon's forearm pressed itself against Sam's face. 

"Have you seen the size of the arm that is going to fist you?" 

"You underestimate me." 

"You overestimate yourself." 

Sam reached up to slap at the bar top. "Hey, my sword?" 

Beyond questioning it, Monsoon's legs magnetised to the scabbard where it leant by the door, then poured their whole mass over to the back of the bar. Sam caught the scabbard on its way down from within the stream of black body parts. After a quick "Thanks," he patted at the hefty middle of the scabbard where it would fit to his body suit. He pushed up with the heel of his hand, making it click and slide open to reveal a compartment within. There were small maintenance tools inside, along with two condoms still attached at their foil wrappers corrugation, and a tube of lubricant obviously not meant for a sword because it smelled strongly of vanilla from two feet away once admitted to circulating air. Monsoon's nostrils phlegmed and he swallowed. But he had to give a wide-lipped smile anyway. 

"Should I tell Armstrong to let you be horny on the battlefield? You've executed admirable preparation and insight tonight." 

"I don't want to sleep with anyone I fight!" Sam laughed off the thought. Monsoon's torso slipped off of his curly hair. It was a stupid idea indeed. Sam grabbed a bit of upper arm and licked it broadly. He winked. "But, Boss: I do not mind a good bedding after a beheading." 

Monsoon sighed. "You won't believe it, but neither do I." 

"I believe it. We're the same, you and I. We feel alive when we kill. Fast blood is fast blood, flowing and engorging, red and smelling of iron as the sparks of clashing blades." 

"Have you ever kissed someone over a freshly cut head?" 

Monsoon did not mean the question as a challenge, still Sam puffed his chest and turned his head to defend his pride before admitting— 

"No." 

Monsoon took Sam's face in one hand. The segments of his arm locked into place after it while it turned Sam's head away from the dark taps behind the bar towards the soft mint light of the art deco arsenic-glass wall lamp. Pink strings pulled the rest of Monsoon's body into position under his head. He withdrew from the tap handles he rested on. He held Sam's head in place and pinned his chest to the keg behind him with the other hand. Sam's thighs parted. Monsoon slotted between them slowly, his body drifting into place. They kissed for ten seconds, eleven, closed mouths, drunken lips, then parted. Above them, one of the cubes in Sam's glass had melted under another and the two switched places with a clink. 

"You should try it some time," Monsoon said. 

This close, outside of his armour, Sam realised how big Monsoon was. Seven feet of disarticulated cyborg had him pressed to a barrel of authentic Kentucky bourbon with floating hands and was suggesting snogging over corpses. No one could hear them in this remote part of the base while everyone else was either asleep or watching Thor in the lounge. The cyborg who had Sam's sword and only defence trapped underfoot was a really good kisser even without tongue. Sam was incredibly turned on. 

"Kiss me again," Sam said. Monsoon complied. 

Sam let himself be kissed, and he kissed back in an appreciative manner. He tucked his thighs around Monsoon's. He drew Monsoon's hips closer, and rolled his body against the hard segments that formed his cage. His hands were hungry, wet with sweat and glasses' condensation, and crushing where they clung. To the nape of the neck, the small of the back, marks appeared. They kissed as Monsoon held Sam's head firmly by jaw and then by hair. Finally, when Monsoon shoved both palms under Sam's shirt and began playing with the man's chest cords and one remaining nipple, he held him in place with his kisses alone. 

Their bodies merged and moistened for quite a while in the warming room. Sam wriggled out of all of his clothing even while being held, which was a talent Monsoon was not surprised at all to discover. When Monsoon's body would shift from slight gasps of what approached pleasure, the magnets forced Sam's robotic arm out of kilter to fit into a new position. Sam figured it was unintentional, but aimed for it to happen to his arm again anyway. It was intoxicating to have no control over it with someone he trusted, empowering to learn about a weakness that he could now stay on guard against, and most of all it was always proof that he'd gotten his partner actually turned on. No matter how much Sam pawed at Monsoon, sucked on remaining facial skin, or opened his body and voice box to seduction, Monsoon only blushed in his cheeks under his optical visor. At least the bulbous structure had slotted down into battle mode. That had to mean Monsoon was seeing something he really wanted to inspect closely. Pride mollified, Sam upped his squirming display and groping ministrations. Monsoon only drew away from him when Sam's skin grew so sensitive he started hissing and whining. 

"How was that?" Sam immediately asked. 

"Get on all fours," Monsoon ordered. 

Sam hastily obeyed, grinning up at his partner. "Are you turned on?" 

"Maybe. Turn this way." Instead of waiting for Sam to guess which way was this way, Monsoon manhandled him into place with his behind facing the fridge door. 

"What do you mean? Maybe?" Sam started to rise from his elbows but Monsoon kneed him back down to the floor with minimal force. The knee remained just between Sam's shoulder blades in case he tried to rise again. 

"I've never had intercourse in this body before. What I'm feeling right now may be the extent of my arousal. It feels different from masturbating, but not better. Rejoice: you're having some effect." Monsoon pulled his right forearm off with his left, then slammed it onto the fridge face where it clung easily to the thick metal. 

"Bem. You are a hard man to impress." Sam raised his hips so that his tailbone could rub against the underside of Monsoon's wrist. The fingers there slapped his back appreciatively. 

"Exercise a modicum of empathy: have you tried to come from just your lips?" 

Sam heard Monsoon snap a glove out of Chinook's old box, though the sight was blocked by Monsoon's vacant hips just as long white hair blocked his face. 

"I wouldn't want to," Sam admitted. More excitement rose in him when he saw Monsoon lean over him with the mouth of the glove drawn wide by left hand and right upper arm segments acting as a pincer. Behind Sam's ears, the latex popped onto artificial fingers and sloppily crinkled down the arm. The hand flexed and the rubber sang. 

"May I use all of it?" Monsoon sat backward, taking out the half-used lube. 

Sam nodded eagerly. Monsoon's hips approached his face again while the man leant over his back. Liquid spurted onto the anchored arm above his back. One drop landed on his spine. His hole constricted just thinking about it. Then the wrist bent down all the way and the backs of two fingers rubbed at the rosy flesh. They were hard and wet, and not particularly hotter than the room itself. Sam groaned. 

Slices of leg and arm started to line up under Sam's chest and abdomen while the rubbing continued above. When the two piles were comfortably equal, the rubbing escalated to a bent knuckle poking in. Monsoon's free hand slid along the floor on its magnet with the palm cupped and fingers arching splayed until it fit as a basket under Sam's straining hardness and other softer delicacies. Still, Sam was afraid to move from position. He was perhaps too transfixed by the limbless man lying on the floor with stubbed hips just under his scruffy chin. The forearm above him turned on its axis. One finger slipped into his passage. 

"Sam." Monsoon waited for Sam to theatrically moan and then actually accommodate the entry of one more finger before he issued another order. "You may use your arms. Reach behind you and take whatever flat magnet is closest." 

Sam grabbed onto Monsoon's sheathed forearm. The wet splat accompanied his triumphant face. His hand was over one embedded magnet there. 

"You mean this? You want me to stroke your arm like a cock?" 

"That is not what I said." Monsoon's other hand closed dangerously around the base of the Rodrigues family jewels. "A fridge magnet." 

"Understood," Sam groaned. His hips rolled into both forms of lovely touch that assaulted them. He reached behind him for real. He tore Caprese Boy off of the small fridge. 

Below, Monsoon's hip and abdomen split like a woman's legs. Between them was a red ring around shining metal and strings of fuchsia desire. Sam looked into the opened orifice with desire. His left hand touched the rim and ran through the radiation delicately with two fingertips. He expected it to be as wet as it looked. He brought his dry fingertips to his mouth. He expected them to taste as sweet as a woman's nectar. His tasteless fingers pressed to the tile. 

"Did that feel like anything to you?" Sam asked. 

"Maybe if you were to use your right hand," Monsoon explained while he craned his neck up to look at the action. His back was already arcing in anticipation. "Metal on magnet feels different from flesh. But don't bother using it naked. You have a much better tool in it already." 

Sam held the magnet in front of his face, puzzled by the cartoon Jaden Smith. "Caprese Boy?" 

"Strip magnet," Monsoon supplied. "Just try it." 

Egging, or rather edging Sam on, Monsoon withdrew his fingers from the wetted passage. Sam slipped his right hand forward, holding the strip magnet like a Go piece. His middle finger laid it down properly in place on the top of Monsoon's hip, then slid it forward to the back with perfect form. Monsoon's head hit the hard tile below while letting out a loud and long "Aaaah" of which Sam had thought him emotionally incapable. That sounded like lust. 

"That feels good?" Sam asked no one. He knew the answer. 

"Yes, yes," Monsoon answered anyway while Sam wiggled the flat magnet in place. "That's my spinal cord. Forward more." 

Sam complied, truly enjoying this game. He imagined a cross-section of the living body painted over Monsoon's open magnets. The cords of Lorentz connected kidney to kidney, hip bone to hip bone, bladder to bladder, abdominal muscle to abdominal muscle, ten intestine coils... He ran the magnet between them all. 

"That's the intestine. Bottom of the kidney a bit. More forward, a little to the left." 

Encouraging again, Monsoon let both of his fingers back into Sam, then added a third. Sam squeezed down and pushed back on them. 

"More," Sam crooned. 

"Move," Monsoon countered. 

Sam rushed the magnet up and a little to the left. Monsoon's helmet knocked against the tile again with a louder cry. His fingers spasmed within Sam's walls. 

"That's my prostate," Monsoon explained in a rush of sounds before he slowed them down and repeated the words in a hushed tone. Then he sighed while Sam slowly rotated the magnet in place under one finger. 

"Your prostate, eh?" 

"Yes. Hhha— it feels good. I don't know if it's—" 

"A few more fingers, old man." 

"I'm only forty-fo-OHH!" 

Sam was merciless in his new form of caprese seduction. Monsoon peaked all five fingers of his hand and began to stretch Sam's hole one knuckle at a time. Sam moaned as the cone of fingers got in further, eased by his loosened muscles and copious lube. Monsoon moaned as Sam got creative when running the magnet over his insides, only touching on the prostate as the climax to each wandering movement. 

"I only— I don't think—" By the time Monsoon had his hand inserted down to the knuckles, he was breathlessly humping his splayed metallic innards off the floor. Sam's large brows were caught between mindless lust and dedicated concentration. They were finally pleasuring one another, and there was no question that it was sexual and they were both turned on. Sam was biting his lower lip. Monsoon finally closed his fingers. Sam's teeth drew blood while his voice boiled over. 

Monsoon's fist inside of Sam felt thicker than the time he'd been double-dicked plus a dildo. It felt thicker than the monster sized bad dragon he'd once sat on as a dare. It was worth 50 bucks and a beer. Monsoon's giant fist was worth a thousand. Monsoon's arm remained attached to the fridge, so deepening the bulge was up to Sam's comfort and bravery. But as Sam forgot to keep moving the magnet over Monsoon's insides, the fingers unclenched to remind him of their hard knuckles and extra stretching capability. Sam lowed like the ass he was. His length jumped in Monsoon's second hand. His own hands returned to pleasuring his partner. 

"I don't know if it's actually there," Monsoon mumbled. His body writhed to the side after Sam sliced the edge of Jaden's scalloped pink dreadlocks across the supposed site of his prostate. "It might be phantom limb syndrome. Yet it is the only way I can..." Monsoon gasped and his teeth chattered. Sam had taken his hips in one hand and licked along with the magnet. The wet heat only intensified the already burning sensation. "I can reach orgasm..." 

"Do it," Sam urged, growling voice full of pride. He didn't actually care what Monsoon had to say about psychology, but the last sex word caught his attention. He pushed back on the arm inside him. The stretch was so good and getting so deep. 

"Not yet," Monsoon insisted. His arms and legs flew out from under Sam. This forced Sam to drop onto his chest, now supported by only the hand inside him and the one smushed up into his actively throbbing genitals. 

Sam had to release Monsoon's hips so that he could push himself up with his arms and relieve the awkward pressure. He used the leverage to push back further. He groaned. He pushed back again, crawling back on hands and knees. Tiny tiles passed under him until he reached the base of Monsoon's arm. His mouth hung open. His eyes closed. He was so full that it felt like heaven splitting open his insides. This was exactly what he wanted. Sam pushed himself forward and back on Monsoon's arm while uttering filthy Portuguese phrases. 

Monsoon didn't understand a word Sam was saying, but he knew exactly what the man was doing. Like silvery lichen on a tree, he lined up the circles of his body underneath and around Sam's chest. Then, with his victim wrapped in a cocoon of magnetic fore, he took over the thrusting. Monsoon moved Sam's body over his fist, while below he closed up his hip and abdomen like a clamshell over the pearl of the magnet. Monsoon writhed around the wicked sensation while he watched Sam dance for him. The dark Brazilian body had given up its last strand of resistance. Only a strands of saliva from the hopeful tongue tip remained. 

Overwhelmed by the sensation of sixteen hands all over his body and inside him, Sam's joy-addled brain supposed itself in the midst of an orgy as a throng of men pushed him onto the most delicious length he'd ever taken. He was ready, silently begging to suck cock too while his own bounced into a hand below. His hands scrabbled for flesh and once again found Monsoon's legless hips. Feeling only gluteal roundness under his hands, Sam blindly took the hips to his face upon his body's next upswing. When his ass crashed backward into the arm, he groaned. And as he groaned, he licked whatever crotch was before him. 

The crotch was smooth. Sam vaguely remembered it was Monsoon. All of this was Monsoon. He had to remember things, and not lose himself in fantasy. But the liquor, the multiple glasses of liquor, not just the one jack'n'coke at the end, those made fantasies real. So did Monsoon always lack a dick? Yes, he always did, as long as Sam knew him. His crotch was wet and warm. Sam readied his jaw. He set out to eat Monsoon so hard he'd have to snap back his crotch cover and reveal the pussy underneath which would be devoured in turn. It was only fair repayment for how his own passage was being pleasured beyond his control and beyond his wildest dreams. One magnet was rattling against his nipple. The hand stroking him grew tighter and faster. A thumb brushed over his own real prostate. Caprese Boy dropped to the floor. 

When Monsoon came to, after the brief white out of orgasm, Sam was still licking and kissing his crotch panel like the man's own orgasm depended on it. Sam's body was once again working itself over Monsoon's curled fist and limp arm, while precome was drooling out over the palm and spread fingers below. Monsoon's body lay scattered across the floor. He called all of its pieces back toward his torso. The slices assembled in wiggling lines like drunken snakes. Sam noticed that there were actual legs at the sides of his head now, so stopped licking. 

"What you... are you doing?" Monsoon sighed, placing his palm over Sam's wet forehead. 

"Pussy?" Sam supplied. His eyes opened blearily, pupils shot. His hardness throbbed now on the edge of pain. 

"None exists." 

"Euhhhh," Sam droned while his sluggish brain cells remembered Monsoon used to be male. As if the low voice speaking to him meant nothing. 

"Zero vagània, maybe less." 

"Jackass," Sam mumbled. He slapped tiredly at Monsoon's inner thigh. 

"Hi, Sam." 

"I need to come, Monsoon." Sam clenched around the gloved arm still trapped inside him. 

Monsoon demagnetised the base of his wayward arm. Its weight now pulled down on Sam's flesh and began to slide out of his stretched entrance. Sam moaned through the entire passage out of him. His muscles clenched around the arm during its passing, trying to hold on but only pushing it away. The egress felt fantastic and left him gloriously, horrendously, open and empty. 

"Faça favor..." Sam begged, sinking down until his forehead met crossed forearms and his hard heat met floor which could only be icy in comparison. Monsoon pet his hair. 

"I have the next best thing," Monsoon said when he removed his hand from the short-lived affection. "You're clean?" 

"Euh?" 

"Venereal disease." 

"Disease? No disease. I told you—" 

"You've had a few partners since then," Monsoon commented. Sam wouldn't look up from his forearms so he could only hear a glass meet the floor and then liquid hiss into it from far above. The smell of hops tumbled along the tiles. 

"Yeah. No disease." Sam finally rubbed at his eyes with thumb and forefinger while sitting up. His butt was still sorely clenching in protest. He saw Monsoon drink the glass of beer he'd shot down from the tap. 

"I'll need a drink," Monsoon explained after Sam looked at the centre of his visor. Like eyes meeting, Sam reasoned distantly. "Sit back. I'm going to perform fellatio." 

"Wow, that's a big word." Sam may have been drunk and desperate, but he was still willing to give Monsoon shit for making him wait to come. 

"You know it though," Monsoon growled feline while stalking forward on all fours. Sam liked the look of that. He smiled and his hips pressed his need into the thick sex-saturated air. 

Monsoon's hand closed around the shaft which managed to move in his grip. He lowered his head. The smell was revolting. The sight more so. He tasted something in the back of his throat. He let go and sat up. He righted the glass again under the tap, and let more beer fall into it and onto the delicate Egyptian blue glass R of PHARMACY. 

"I'll need another drink," Monsoon explained again. Sam closed his thighs and laid his head back on the top of the low refrigerator. 

"If you don't want to...?" 

"I owe you. But I don't like men." 

"You confound me," Sam expressed after reading it from the fridge magnet next to his head. 

"Big word," Monsoon said before shotgunning the second splash of beer. His pieces started to ambiguate his outline sloppily. That was the right effect. "Now I'm ready." 

"Are you certain?" Sam raised his eyebrow to that. Monsoon crouched back down anyway, a black cat with white face. His form was fuzzy from floating plates. He breathed heavily. 

"Do you want head?" Monsoon's voice crackled. His hands pried at the door of Sam's legs. Sam let them open. His straining arousal awaited. 

Monsoon lowered his entire head onto Sam's erection, not even choking. His body was shaking harder than ever, vibrating up through Sam's bones where the two touched. Hands at knees, then knees rattling at buttocks, then a piece of arm on Sam's nipple again, and some leg at his back, and a thigh sliding against his cheek. Monsoon sucked and licked and bobbed over black lips like he had no teeth. His helmet met Sam's pubis at every down stroke, and his body was a dastardly shapeless mess that bathed Sam in pink light, but it hardly mattered. Monsoon was so unexpectedly good at giving head that Samuel could only grab hair and stare. 

Later, days later, Samuel caught back up with Monsoon outside the canteen. Monsoon had left after Sam came down his throat. Then life had gotten busy again. That was pretty normal behaviour, they both supposed. Thus unanxious, Sam jogged up to Monsoon and attempted to slap him on the back. As usual, the shoulder segment flew out of the way. 

"How are you doing?" Sam asked while jogging backwards to Monsoon's front so he could face him the entire way. "Answer truthfully." 

"I'm fine," Monsoon said. 

"I went to Gabon. Where were you?" 

"New Brunswick. It was horrible." 

"Glad to be back home?" 

"You can call this home?" Monsoon motioned around him to the beige halls. He smiled faintly to accentuate his joke. Sam took that and blew it up into a cackle. 

"Hah-hah! You are right! But are you happy to see me?" 

"Reasonably. You are exceedingly happy to see me." 

"I exceed nothing. Remember, you left me quite happy the last time we met." Sam winked and crooked his pinkie finger. 

"That's true," Monsoon conceded. He closed his arms behind his back. The two returned to walking down the hallway back towards the private rooms and the glass door that led to the garden. "You remember it?" 

"I was drunk off my ass, but I remember it! What a night to be remember." 

"Don't be so loud. I'd rather keep my reputation as the one person you haven't slept with." 

"Oh, I told everyone." 

"Thank you." Monsoon sent some part of him flying against the back of Sam's head so quickly that it was unidentifiable. That punctuated the sarcasm. 

"You think you have any pride left in this place?" 

"Of course not. You hoard it all." Monsoon's tone returned to pleasantry. 

"But I meant to ask..." 

"Mm?" Their heels clicked off-rhythm over the linoleum while the yellow springtime light grew closer through the far off marbled glass. 

"You said that you don't like men. But you had sex with me. And you were very good at... performing fellatio." 

"Many people are good at things they don't like." 

"You drank more than I've seen you drink before." 

"Are you concerned for me?" 

"Ah, I like you." 

"I vomited it up presently. I had a terrible night before New Brunswick. A massive hangover did not enhance my experience of the city." 

"I'm glad you didn't die." 

"Of alcohol poisoning?" 

"What else?" 

"Should I be glad that I didn't die, do you think?" Monsoon opened the garden door. Musty pollen and fragrant hyacinth washed over them, backed by the scent of young buds wriggling into their first year of life. "Death is the counterbalance of life. Death is what happens when consciousness ceases. It cannot be feared once it happens. I don't dread it now." 

"You shouldn't die from getting drunk enough to suck a man's cock." Samuel lowered his voice. He swiped a hand at Monsoon's dodging forearm just to capture his attention. Monsoon looked down at him, head actually tilting. "Hey." Sam reached again under dour tone and countenance, and this time caught a wrist. 

"Phnom Penh," Monsoon said as a summary of everything. 

"Khmer Rouge. I know." Sam tightened his fist. "I will not ask you to pretend it did not happen. I can't forget my mother's fingers chopped off, one by one, by her top student. And then when he came for me and I sliced his gut open until the insides fell out. I can't forget the infection that took her, and the burning rage that I still have for the men who watched it all but escaped me. But I won't let anyone force me to remember. Someone who mocks my parents? I'll cut his throat. You should have cut mine before you force yourself to remember whatever happened to you." 

"You're angry at your past," Monsoon said as he lifted his arm from Sam's grip. 

"You are too." 

"No, I'm not." Monsoon walked out of the doorway. His arm slotted back into place, square against the other across his crossed sais. 

"Then you fear it?" Sam stomped after him. He spat on the ground. 

"I don't fear it, Minuano." Monsoon looked back at Sam. He smiled brightly. "It's gone. It can't hurt me. The things it taught me still sting like old scars. If I let go of what ties me to them, then they too will disappear. Look at the flowers. They won't stay forever." 

Sam scraped dust over his spit with the side of his foot. "Did you suck me to forget?" 

"I sucked you because you needed release. Also, I think we're friends?" 

"Is friendship like flowers?" Sam felt like kicking himself for how pseudo-philosophic that sounded. Still he trudged between foxgloves to where Monsoon observed the tiny clustered columns of hyacinth in blue, white, and coral pink matching Samuel's lips. 

"Yes. But do you find flowers beautiful?" 

"Yes. Do you?" Sam looked from hyacinth, to narcissus, to budding peach leaves, then to Monsoon's face. 

Monsoon's little triangular smile reappeared. "I like you, Minuano." 

Sam didn't realise until much later than Monsoon hadn't properly answered the question, but the answer was still correct. 


	5. Religion Is a Joke

Briefly, Monsoon wondered if religion really WERE real and consequence to that if he'd accumulated so much bad karma that he was forced to stay alive in this lifetime and suffer. He then reminded himself that this was a silly and self-pitying thing to think. All the same, he still wondered why he was still alive. He was bleeding out from the neck. He could still faintly move the muscles of his upper back, so his spinal cord was intact. He could still think. 

The two magnets at the base of his innards thrummed. His two chest pieces rattled on the ground. Monsoon felt he was dying, but still... not yet. Not yet. His body pulled together. He clamped his hand over his throat. He staggered into the ground floor of World Marshall Tower while Raiden was destroying it from above. There was a roll of tape left in the information desk. Monsoon used one dead secretary's blouse to clean his wound, then pressed the two halves of his neck wound together hard, then taped it all into place. It was the worst and shittiest first aid conceivable, but in his defence, which he was thinking of as he continued to walk, the amount of blood he'd lost was really catastrophic in a compacted bio form like his. 

There was a doctor on the fourth floor, right? There was... no there was something on the sixteenth, some special doctor. He had to get to the doctor, press the button. Eyes kept staring at him. There was a doctor on the sixteenth floor? 

Monsoon returned to consciousness. He was lying on a metal table inside a closet and didn't remember how he got there. An IV bag of blood hung over his head from a shelf. Mistral was looking at him funny, which meant he was hallucinating on top of everything else. He still had tape in one hand. He taped the IV to the top of his head, figuring gravity would still get the blood into him. He left the room, still feeling deaf and blind. His helmet wasn't working so well. A doctor must have treated him. 

"Is the doctor still there?" He asked. 

"Yes," answered a timid voice behind him. Of course the doctor would be scared out of their mind with an insane Liberian cyborg killing every single staff member he encountered. 

"We must... go." Monsoon tried to access his CODEC. He stopped at a wall communicator and tried to remember how to do CODEC communication that way. Thinking about how to navigate those permissions and weird submenus on a door lock made the CODEC in his head start working. 

"Sundowner?" 

No answer. His direct superior was dead. 

"Senator Armstrong, sir?" 

Monsoon waited. 

"What? You're alive?" Armstrong's voice cracked into Monsoon's ears. Monsoon wasn't sure whether to be relieved. 

"Yes, sir." 

"Sundowner's dead. You're in charge. Get Desperado into shape, man. And don't let Jetstream Sam go off on any personal missions. The cyborg Raiden is top priority. Jesus, he's costing us seven hundred fifty million dollars already!" 

"Yes, sir." 

"Go do it. Explain later. Effing Christ, you people." 

"Yes—" Armstrong hung up, which made the inside of Monsoon's head ring. He felt sick for a while. 

Was Sam going to go on a mission? 

"Sir?" Oh, it was that doctor. 

"We're still going. I'm talking on CODEC." Monsoon gestured toward his head, but his arm was turned 90 degrees without his permission, so it flopped at the curved steel beam outside the floor-length window instead. 

"Yes, sir." 

Okay that was done. Was Minuano going anywhere? He had a bike. Armstrong knew he was up to something. What? 

Oh, of course: Samuel's plan to overthrow Armstrong and bang the pretty cyborg he'd met in Africa. 

That was the stupidest plan he'd ever heard! 

OF COURSE SAM WAS DOING IT. 

Monsoon contacted the general CODEC frequencies like a noob in a MMORPG. "Where is the enemy cyborg? Where is code name Minuano, also known as Jetstream Sam?" Monsoon slouched against the window. He felt his throat. Stitched up, covered in some weird gel. 

"Please don't touch that," the doctor said, voice buzzing like a fly, "as the replacement cell honeycomb is very delicate." 

Monsoon lowered his hand. Something about that reminded him of ears and livers grown completely perfectly on bio-gel foam. Right, that was in his throat. He was alive. 

"Enemy cyborg escaped on a bike heading East," the CODEC chimed in. Whoever was using it sounded angry. Any survivor would be. "No one knows where the hell Antonio Banderas is." 

Well obviously following the enemy cyborg or worse. Monsoon turned around in the hallway. He remembered the elevators were in the other direction. He passed the vague form of the doctor. They got to the elevator. Monsoon's handprint brought them down to the parking garage. He paused in front of the company motorcycles just to confirm one was gone. He had a hunch. He was always correct. 

Monsoon got tired of waiting to hear the doctor's footsteps behind him. He grabbed an arm behind him, and forced them to keep pace. They got to the ambulances. One was gone. All right, one left. Monsoon pulled open the driver seat and placed the doctor in it. He squinted up. The doctor had a golden coat and long hair. Woman? 

"Sir, I cannot drive a car." The voice was high and Hispanic. A woman. Monsoon placed her back on the ground. His head swam. He picked her up again, walked to the other side of the van, and placed her in the passenger's seat. 

"I'll drive," he felt himself say. 

He thought the doctor tried to argue with him. The memory even as he was living it got hazy on the road. They were in the high desert. The doctor had hung the IV of blood on the passenger's side roof handle, and she squeezed it lightly. The tube attached to it was long, but red. Had it always been red while it flopped next to his face when he was walking? He reminded himself to pay attention to the road. 

Sam was lying on his back in the middle of the desert. Again, Monsoon was beyond judging him. Whatever plan had gone down was obviously stupid, but Monsoon felt like he understood perfectly why Sam had done whatever it was. It was in Sam's nature. Monsoon picked up his warm, heavy body. He carried it back to the ambulance. 

"His heart is bad," the doctor concluded in the simplest terms. "Among other things." That was more complex. Monsoon wasn't sure about the other things. 

"He can use this one. I don't think I'm using it." Monsoon grabbed over where his heart used to be. The slice slid out with his hand. He could feel the pumping from inside, the thrum of life, the sizzling of electricity down nerves and veins. He handed chest and shoulder to the doctor. He stopped recalling time again. 


	6. This World and All of Its People Are Diseased

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In Khmer, ʔǝv/âu means dad, and ko:n/kon means son. Make of that what you will. Cala-se is Portuguese for shut upppp.

Watching Raiden and Sam kiss almost disgusted Monsoon. Those two had started out wanting to murder each other, and now here they were wearing matching ugly sweaters and making out under the mistletoe. It was real mistletoe, too. Maybe one of them would be stupid enough to eat it and die. They held each other's butts and mashed their mouths together and pushed their crotches and thighs close so fervently that the pyjama bottoms might create sparks. Their little toesies were on top of one another, Raiden over Sam then Sam over Raiden. Sam had started licking Raiden's chin so his wide tongue fit between the two seams of synthetic skin, so Raiden tugged at his even longer ponytail until Monsoon could actually hear Sam growl, and here he was chopping up almonds for dumb Christmas Cookies, which was a holiday he never celebrated before shacking up with those lovebirds as a glorified house servant, and of course he could see them macking it in the flat chrome strip that detailed the top of the microwave above the stove. 

"Ewwwwwwwwww." 

Well at least HE hadn't said it. That was little John running down the stairs. The lanky thirteen year old held onto the bannister bars while poking his head through the gap right where the stairway bent. He poked out his tongue too while his eyes squinted. He really looked just like his father, but with a blunter nose and slightly darker eyes. Mother's horse eyes. 

Sam's hands removed themselves from Raiden's ass so quick one could assume they'd never strayed to such a PG-13 place. It wasn't like John hadn't seen that before anyway. The Dual Duel Dads were definitely physical beings in love and war. Fate saw to it that THEY got to have EVERYTHING they wanted, even custody. They owed him, didn't they? If he hadn't been running on autopilot and duty, pulling himself and Sam together because Desperado's continuity was beaten into his brain, none of this sickening domesticity would be possible. Sam would be dead, and Raiden would be stuck as a trophy husband. Monsoon realised he was being bitter. That was a bad habit to nurse when still absolutely nothing in life really mattered. He tapped his bare temple tiredly: can't be lonely if you don't miss anyone. 

John rushed past the living room fire, and the pine tree decorated in coloured glass and carved sandalwood, and his totes cringe worthy dads into the kitchen. 

"taə ʔǝv tvə:numnɛ:k mɛ:nte:?" Are you making cookies? John asked in Khmer. His eyes focused in on bowls of sweet and floury ingredients along with sundry sweetmeats. He knew he was supposed to put on his Pokémon apron when in the kitchen but the smell of the season was overcoming him. 

"Hey," Sam called from the hearth. 

"taə ko:n cɑŋ cuəy ʔǝv te:?" Do you want to help me? Monsoon asked encouragingly. 

"HEY," Sam insisted with irritation. 

"It's a life skill, Sam," Monsoon called back. 

"I want to help make cookies, Papa," John said while putting on a puppy face. 

"Let him make cookies, Sam," Raiden said at a much lower volume. He put his hand to Sam's chest, and even coddled the almost-beard under his chin with a forefinger. 

"It's not about the cookies," Sam murmured. His arm encircled Raiden's back. They were about to kiss again, so John stuck his tongue out at Monsoon's face far up above. Monsoon mirrored the action, then his hands forced apron Mimikyu over John's head. John could see his white hair and yellow front reflected up there in Monsoon's helmetless, lidless, button eyes. 

Sometimes a family is two dads, an ornery cyborg, a big brother, and a little sister. On cue with John's thoughts, tiny Vanna tumbled down the stairs with the force of a freight train of sugar and an appropriate whistling call. "numnɛ:ʔ numnɛ:ʔ !!!!" Cookies, cookies! 

"We speak English when Papa's home," Sam reminded the three year old before bundling her up in woolly arms and a nuzzling kiss. She looked just like him. Raiden was three years, a divorce (from Rose), and a marriage counsellor (definitely not Rose) (actually just Drebin of all people listening to him whine) past being upset about where mini-Sam came from. 

"Maybe she'd speak more English if Papa were home more often," Monsoon sang from the kitchen. 

"Cala-se, she goes to preschool!" Sam shot back defensively. Plus, Raiden left home with him, so Monsoon couldn't hang all the blame on Sam. 

"Not now, guys," Raiden said with some snakelike emphasis. "It's Christmas." 

"Not quite Christmas," Sam commented. Vanna coughed in his arms. 

"That sounds nasty," Raiden said of the cough, stepping quickly over to put his hand on her forehead. Vanna sniffed too. 

"It's just the smoke," Sam rationalised. He put Vanna down by the tree where wrapped presents tried her capacity for patience and self-denial. Her cough tried her throat even harder. This time, it was a wet and productive cough from her diaphragm. Sam was bent over her in a second, and feeling her forehead himself with his left hand. "She's hot." 

"Take her temperature?" Raiden crouched down to Vanna's level too. He rubbed at his own left hand before presenting a finger. "Suck Daddy's finger, Vanna." Vanna shook her head, then coughed badly again. "Vanna, Daddy needs to take your temperature." 

Finally Vanna bit down on Raiden's fingertip. Sick or not, she was stuck in a phase of Don't Do Anything Raiden Wants which had come after Don't Do Anything Sam Wants. Don't Do Anything Monsoon Wants had apparently also happened while they were in Geneva but it seemed like a myth to Sam and Raiden. 

"38 Celsius; Baby, you're too hot," Raiden concluded from the sensors in his skin. 

"Wanna cookie," Vanna grumbled. 

"No, you're going back to bed." Raiden picked her up. 

"No no no no no!" Vanna's inevitable protest was cut off by more coughing. 

"I'll make an exceedingly bland moansngao," Monsoon called from the kitchen. He waved his hand in front of John's face then pointed over to the pantry. He asked John to fetch the salty chicken stock. "noammɔ:k, dʑɑ:n, noammɔ:k sraeʔɑmbǝl pi: tnə: ba:t." 

John actually didn't know what all the words meant, so he brought back multiple cartons from the area indicated. The cookies had to be put on hold until a good chicken soup could be made. Sam ended up herding Vanna back into bed and reading to her while Raiden helped chop carrots so he wouldn't go insane from worry. After soup, covered in a rash, Vanna had to go to the pædiatrician. 

Vanna was sick with scarlet fever through Christmas. Monsoon blamed the preschool. Sam blamed unwashed vegetables from the Asian market. Raiden predictably blamed himself. 

John got it next. Sam had a scratch in his throat while caring for him, but had been on antibiotics in preparation. Raiden was immune. Thanks to modern medicine, scarlet fever wasn't a death sentence. But Rose had read The Velveteen Rabbit to John when he was much younger, and was scarred by it, so spent his entire fever thinking that he was going to die or that everything he owned would be burnt. In one bad dream, he imagined that he had to be burned instead. When he got better, he felt immensely stupid. He told his dads and Monsoon about his fears and dreams, and they all laughed about it. 

Raiden and Sam couldn't put off missions much longer once John was better. Again, they'd be away for a week to save the world. John made then promise to come back safe. Vanna made it a pinkie promise. Maybe they'd get a wound that cut bone deep or bled out pints of white blood, but Raiden and Sam were certain they'd get back safely. They always did because they were the strongest heroes on Earth. There was nothing to worry about. They'd be back before school started again. 

Yet Raiden and Sam had not been alone in caring for sick people. Monsoon washed the sick clothes and clammy sheets. He fixed and fed food to those who were not well. He checked on everyone each hour. He daubed Vanna's forehead and bathed her. He convinced a delirious John that nothing would be burnt because alcohol existed, and spent the next hour cleaning the boy's room to prove it. He offered his body up for a threesome in the car while the kids were sleeping and Sam was feverish and Raiden was worrying so maybe orgasm would get him to shut up and go to sleep. 

While Monsoon earned his keep and staved off execution for his crimes, the streptococcus bred. His body was small, like a baby's, but his immune system old and wizened. But fifty years of experience fighting infections could not add sufficient defences without the bone marrow to manufacture ammunition. His tongue shed white scum over engorged papillae. His sternum and nape exploded as red star maps. His throat burned past pain, and his melting brain jettisoned his body into scattered confusion. On Monday, when Sam and Raiden were away in the Caucus mountains halfway across the Earth, John found his âu arranged in a neat circle on their bedroom floor, black and red body crisscrossed by the blond light of a windowpane. 

Whenever the dads who tried hard to live up to their status left the house, Monsoon was in charge. He was supposed to fix breakfast, and arrange vegetables and peppery soy patties over rice in lunchboxes. He was supposed to help John pack his heavy bags for school. He was supposed to tell John to survive the day, then do whatever he did while John was at school, probably go into some sort of robot standby after doing laundry, then have dinner going. He was supposed to carry Vanna to the preschool while John ate breakfast. The preschool was a block away from the pædiatrician. 

John stepped over the loose parts of Monsoon's body to pick up his head. It was much heavier than he had expected. The clock said it was already 10:01, so John was late for school already. He carried Monsoon's helmeted head down the stairs and put it on the dining table. He dumped all of his books out of his backpack, but left the fat coil notebook and Kamen Rider pencils in the front pocket. The phone rang. John realised that was what had woken him up earlier. When he answered, it was his school. Where was he, they asked. So he told the truth: "I'm on my way to the doctor." 

Snow only lightly dusted Denver's packed ice that day. After a breakfast of cookies, John put on his warmest clothing. He strapped his backpack to his front so that he could cradle his âu's head and prevent it from bouncing too much. As Monsoon blearily began to regain consciousness, they walked together into the white. 

"Am I dying?" Monsoon asked in Khmer. 

"No," John said. He sniffed up the long line of mucus that the cold tried to draw out. 

"I'm not allowed." 

"Don't die, âu. I love you." 

"I love you too, kon," Monsoon insisted through the weak scratch of his voice. John's arms drew tighter around him. The backpack smelled like crayons and hand lotion. "Where's Vanna?" 

"I called Uncle Hal." 

"You're so smart." It hurt to talk. "You're smarter than your parents." 

"I'm not smarter than you," John said after another sniff. "I think you're smarter than Uncle Hal." 

"Don't lie. What about Sunny?" 

"She's the number one smartest person ever," John said in English, trying to copy the young mechanic George's Guyanese intonations. 

"Good." Monsoon stayed silent. He listened to John's feet crunching on the ground. A few cars passed them by, grinding over salt. They walked for twenty footsteps. "Do you have a hat on?" 

"Yes, âu." 

"Gloves?" 

"YES, âu." 

"Good." Thirty footsteps passed. "I'm very sleepy." 

"Don't die." 

"I won't." 

"I really love you." 

"I love you TOO." Ten footsteps. "And, kon, John, thank you." 

Two days later, when the fever broke, and his thoughts returned to order, Monsoon realised he was in a closet again. He could hear children, faintly, probably a room and a hall away, but the squeals were unmistakable. Again, an IV bag hung over him. His head sat on plush towels in a basket. Between boxes of throat depressors on the shelf below, a screen and portable processor shone and beeped at the end of the wall outlet. He tried to open the door, but the handle was brass. He concentrated very hard to bring anything toward himself. If he were lucky, there would be stainless steel surgical equipment near him. Instead, what lurched toward his neck was a box of rechargeable batteries, along with the hook that had been holding his IV. Good enough. He took the hook between his teeth. He shoved the box of nickel batteries away from him, then let them drop on the door handle. The door swung outward. There was a trash can made of rounded sheet metal within his line of vision. Monsoon revved up his twin magnets to shoot at it clavicle first. 

A girl in the hallway saw his exit. She screamed. Monsoon didn't have time for her. Once he got outside, he could shoot between streetlamp covers to get home. The cabinets he could see were made of metal, with teddy bears on them. He recognised the pædiatrician's waiting room. If he shot in there, he'd terrorise an entire room of children. Wonderful. Monsoon was still alive and irritating everyone around him. 

The doctor's assistant covered him in a blanket and drove him home before he got the chance to wreak terror. John was overjoyed, almost crying. Vanna looked ready to run out of John's grasp on her shoulders. Uncle Hal looked very, very tired. Monsoon's body called to him from the second floor. Wind blew, snow fell, and the weak cared for the strong. 


	7. Peens: the DNA Rifle of the Soul

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm still a beginner at Khmer and probably translated Sinn's "Oh, Nature!" wrong and so I apologise to any native speakers. As for the waka, I stand by my translations there, crafting the allusions reflect the feeling of the situation. Also, I bet you thought the horrible chapter titles were gone and then this happens.

Raiden was worrying again. When he worried, he got broody and violent, so he was spending most of his time repeatedly destroying exercise equipment and calling up Boris again and again to ask if there were any leads on Sam's case or even a quick job to do. Sadly, the world was temporarily at peace, and Sam's "case" was an entirely accidental bridge collapse as the result of the United States not paying anything for infrastructure. And Raiden was not allowed to fight the entire Federal Highway Administration. 

Monsoon and John shucked corn in the kitchen while Vanna did her first grade spelling homework. Raiden was vocalising angrily in the basement while an entire bag of actual stones pulverized thanks to his feet and fists. Jetstream Sam was in the hospital being operated on after a steel beam crashed through his artificial heart, and a rivet popped into his already scarred left eye. Raiden did not consider "at least it didn't go into his brain" sufficiently calming news. Rose had sent a can of expensive mixed nuts and a giant bouquet: blue anemones set between balls of coral geranium which lay a wreath for a cloud of yellow carnations. That meant basically screw you in the language of flowers. She knew Raiden knew. Joke's on her; Monsoon had already candied and eaten the carnations as a snack and taught her son that such a thing was possible. Vanna was still chewing on some petals while repeatedly writing out the word "people" which had an o in it because hey why not that makes sense I mean I'm only in first grade but I'm just thinking it could be spelled "peepl" but I guess you're the teacher and it's way too early in your day to try to institute spelling reform haha just kidding viva la revolución. Everyone longed for summer vacation. 

Not a vacation, but a reprieve was in store for that night. Sunny had invited the kids to come with her to watch a scheduled meteor shower as it coïncided with a comet. And they could mess around with her engines and nanomaterials too. Uncle Hal would be bringing an anime movie related to comets or stars or something, and there'd be popcorn and Pocky, and the kids could stay up as late as they wanted then sleep in come the morning. Everyone hoped it would alleviate the anxiety around having Papa in the hospital. 

Hal and Sunny each pushed the doorbell even though they were standing next to each other. The extended family, minus Sam, had corn on the cob with spicy lemon chicken kebabs. The food got a bit messy, but messy was fun. The kids piled into Hal's super old company van, excited to sit on benches in the back instead of wearing seatbelts. Raiden wished them well; Monsoon waved them off. Just before the van doors closed, Blade Wolf deigned to let out a real bark when John pet him and said "Hey, good boy." 

Raiden pretended it was too cold outside as an excuse to run back downstairs. Monsoon let him marinate in his own dumb feelings because the dishes had to be washed. The longer Raiden mulled silently in the basement, the more Monsoon's own doubts crept in. He wondered again if he shouldn't have died earlier, many times. He was in a borrowed body doing dishes for a bi couple and the kids that proved they were bi. He didn't exactly get thanks for raising them either. Rose, despite not having custody, still found the time and energy to despise him and threaten him for existing around her little John. Sam yelled at him for letting Khmer be Vanna's first language. Now, joke's on him because Vanna was also a Khmer name. And it meant... gold. 

Monsoon remembered Meas. He clutched the stainless steel curved around the large kitchen sink. His chest sagged. He was stuck in a cycle. Thick hands with dirty nails, the smell of sandalwood, novel sex, a little golden girl, disaster. He'd come close to dying so many times, and then his life repeated. Religion was a joke, and the joke was on him. He still didn't believe in any of it, but the cruel comedy of his fate was palpable. He wondered how long it would take this time for him to settle into the bright, peaceful mind that did not care. He touched that pure white flame so often, but it never engulfed him. Maybe when it did, he would finally die. 

But he couldn't die yet. There were four dumb children who needed him. Two were adults he'd slept with at varying levels of emotional intimacy, but still. But still what? But still he couldn't die? Or. But still he didn't love Jack the ripper of the basement? 

Again Monsoon smelled sandalwood. The Christmas ornaments were long gone. He heard a soft noise from the basement. No one moved below. He floated to the door. Funnelled up from below, he heard Raiden weeping. Monsoon filed himself down the basement stairwell. 

Raiden sat on a broken punching bag. The entire basement was a mess of broken things. The overhead light hung dark and shattered. Only the lizardry night light John made of an old cat food can, with four feet, a tail and a little head cut out of the sides and bent up flat, still let soft orange light out. Raiden was definitely crying, and holding onto a smashed bottle of sandalwood oil meant for muscle massages. It had been a gift from Sam. The scene made sense. 

Monsoon settled himself onto the bust out end of the punching bag next to Raiden. Raiden said nothing. Neither of them needed to recount what had happened lately or explain their actions. Raiden sniffed quietly for a few minutes, then put the broken bottle down on the floor next to the big circular stopper, flat part still sitting flat to keep in the small amount of oil it still held. Raiden crossed his arms. Monsoon gave him more time until a mourning dove sang at the blinking satellite lights that outshone the stars. 

"You know," Monsoon said, "in this situation, I think I'll say what Sam would. Wanna bone?" 

Raiden struck Monsoon across the jaw. 

"YAAKHH!" Monsoon cried out in pain then held his cheek. His other hand pointed at Raiden in irritated accusation. "I didn't deserve that!" 

"Yes you did." 

"No I didn't, you mean little man." 

"Mean? You're calling me mean?" 

"I offer you release and you punch me in the jaw." 

"You're not Sam," Raiden growled uncomfortably. 

"Neither are you." Monsoon rubbed his hurt cheek. 

"What, do you want me to be?" 

"I don't think I could handle two of him," Monsoon snorted. "Or two of you. You perfectly balance out each other's defects to a level of mild annoyance." 

"If we annoy you so much, why are you still here?" 

"It's been seven years. Why haven't you kicked me out?" 

"Don't turn this around on me." Raiden picked up the top of the oil bottle. He tried to fit it back in place over the bottom, but it wouldn't work. He let go. The stopper fell into the sandalwood oil. The loud clink released more scent. 

"You know he is statistically bound to live, right? Epidural anæsthesia only results in mortality once in every hundred thousand patients. The last time he had a heart transplant, he didn't even have anæsthesia." 

"Yes he did. They replaced the weird valve you gave him." 

"You're welcome." 

"Yeah, okay, thanks for the millionth time." Raiden sighted, then lowered his head onto his folded arms and his folded arms onto his knees. "You're weird." 

"You dwell too much on the past and don't deal with loss well." 

Raiden sat up again. "Can you blame me?! After what I've been through?" 

"Don't play the oppression Olympics in this house. We'll have a triple tie." 

"You're still weird. Sometimes you're so charming, and then you insult me to my face." 

"I simply prefer to tell the truth. I've heard that's a trait you appreciate in men." 

"Maybe." Raiden turned his head away from the hint of white in the dark room that signified Monsoon's hair. 

"If you didn't like men who TAUNT you, you never would have married Minuano." Monsoon swung his legs perpendicular the punching bag, to stretch them out long instead of folding them up like a squatting gargoyle on one end of the battered leather, wool, and sand. 

"He doesn't just taunt me." Raiden sounded like he was remembering Sam vividly again, in the way that made his eyes narrow and water. 

"Of course. You enjoy his theatrical speeches. Mine, not so much." Monsoon set his hands on the floor, arms locked straight so he could lean back into an obtuse angle. He looked over his right shoulder to Raiden. The man now sat with his back in lie to their punching bag bench, and his platinum hair lit up in a white halo from the streetlights that glared through the barred basement window while the orange lizard-can backlit it as an expressionless Jack-o-lantern. 

"He reads poetry and you read textbooks," Raiden said. It was a fair summary of Samuel vs Monsoon. Raiden's claws glittered from the street lights as well. The scratches set deep in them from battle caught more light than a proper æsthetic set left untouched. Raiden was like that, Monsoon mused, pretty but beaten to hell. 

While cars crunched over February ice, Monsoon recited: 

"O, Nature, you have created me.  
But how could you do this to me?  
I can now understand that love has turned to darkness. 

Although it is dark, we forge ahead.  
My life has gone wrong, and exhausted all hope.  
I stopped wanting love, you know, stopped expecting it. 

Daybreak and midnight, I cannot distinguish.  
I will love, then become senseless, my every day restless,  
If I endure living in this predestined fate. 

What a curse to follow predestination!  
My life is misery to the point of death.  
I live each day without meaning.  
I meet only love which flies away like smoke." 

Raiden paused. He tucked stray white fluff behind the simulacrum of an ear. He turned his head over his shoulder to look at Monsoon, unsure if he should be worried or angry. 

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" 

"It's Cambodian poetry. Maybe it lost something in live translation." 

"Oh." Raiden's eyebrows piqued, and his face threatened to blush. Monsoon had been doing something nice. Ish. 

月見れば  
千々に物こそ  
悲しけれ  
わが身ひとつの  
秋にはあらねど 

Were I to look upon the moon, a million sundry thoughts would sadden me, and yet it is not for me alone that autumn has come. Monsoon spoke again, his words slow and the trilling pronunciation of Japanese distinctively off, but not in an American way. Something about the poem was familiar to Raiden. His foreclaw scratched at the peeling leather next to his thigh. He stared down at the orange sheen on that hand. He could hear his own breathing. 

"Please don't make me say another," Monsoon said quickly. "The only other one I know is the one with the pine/pine pun and that one isn't applicable to your current situation." 

That implied that the verse he'd quoted actually applied to this situation. Raiden thought about it. It did: a reminder that misery comes to everyone, and that he wasn't the centre of the universe, nor his sadness the cause of disaster, nor his past a thing which could hurt him anymore. Chiding, yet comforting. 

ながらへば  
またこの頃や  
しのばれむ  
憂しと見し世ぞ  
今は恋しき

It was Monsoon's turn to sit in silence as he heard Raiden's much more practiced pronunciation. 

Carefully, he asked, "Could you translate that?" 

"If I live a long time," Raiden said before a deep breath, thinking carefully on the waka poem, his memory of it, and his small grasp of Middle Japanese, "then when I look back on these times, just as I've seen a world of grief, I will hold the present dear." 

Monsoon carefully took in the words. His right hand drifted to settle next to Raiden's left. Both sat sentinel over a molehill of the bag's tiny sand. Grain by grain, it slipped from the rip Raiden's claws had made, to settle as an hourglass below. 

"You mean it?" Monsoon cracked open a thin smile to ask. 

"Heh, yeah, sure." Raiden's voice tried to be gruff and unfeeling over a chuckle, but from the way he turned his face back to the far wall, Monsoon could tell he meant it. 

Two black fingers arched as inquisitive spider papillae. The fourth and fifth stalked Raiden's silver hand, then settled atop it smoothly. Monsoon's hand was only marginally warmer than the air as his frugal inner mechanisms were fashioned to avoid releasing energy as heat. Raiden's hand had greater warmth, whether by flaw or intention. Monsoon's forearm leant up and spun minutely over the pivot point of his two fingers. It settled as sleek metal against Raiden's dully textured dark alloy. 

"Do you want to go to the hospital?" Monsoon asked. 

"They kicked me out, remember?" Raiden tried to play that off as a joke, but was obviously upset about it. 

"No, sorry, I forgot," Monsoon lied. He knew Raiden had been banned for raising a stink about hurrying Sam's surgery and getting the best doctors for it. But asking was the kind thing to do, to offer the comfort of being proximally closer to Sam. The side of Monsoon's head bumped into the back of Raiden's. Their white hair mingled, and stayed. The rest of his body slowly and silently navigated into the empty space between them. 

"You know—" Raiden spoke, freezing Monsoon's parts in mid-air. "I'm surprised you know anything from the Hyakunin Isshu." 

The slivers of magnetic flesh completed their crossing. Monsoon now leant his side against Raiden's back and left arm. His pink magnetism packed into the triangular dip between one arm and two bodies so the space would be full. To Raiden, it felt like a bubble bath all in a line. When he next spoke, Monsoon's light-hearted tone flowed close by the cockles of Raiden's ears. 

"John made me watch the card game anime with him." 

"Yu-Gi-Oh?" 

"Chihayafuru. The main girl is his type, I think. She reminds me of Meryl: the dedication and drive, and the love underneath. Chihayaburu: awesome, majestic, ardent." 

"You're telling me he's into doms?" 

Monsoon broke down laughing. Their hands remained connected. Raiden got to feel real proud of himself. Monsoon lifted his head to speak again, but it soon bobbed down from another peal of mirth. 

"Raiden you— you talk about your son like— that..." Monsoon covered his mouth with his red hand. 

"You were talking about his type," Raiden rebutted smugly. 

Monsoon took deep breaths while his chest pieces clacked against his abdomen. His left hand secured a deeper hold between Raiden's fingers. Raiden let it proceed. Raiden's thigh twisted around to meet the meshed fingers. It was warm, and the silk enclosing its cord muscles was soft, almost like skin. Once Monsoon's head rose and clicked back into its chalice, Raiden's head turned to welcome it back. His cheek lay against Monsoon's, his ear over a black box. Now Monsoon's skin was warmer from blood and laughter, while Raiden's chin was ever cold. 

"He's growing up too fast," Monsoon said of John wistfully. 

"I think he's taking it pretty slow, considering." Raiden bent his thumb to pat at Monsoon's pinkie. In his mind, the children were not child soldiers, and thus advancing at a normal pace. He could almost envy their childhood crushes and academic struggles. 

"Yourrr honourrrr," Monsoon began a pitch-perfect whiny impression of Rose's lawyer during the divorce, "Mmmmmnnnnym, Childe Soldyier." Raiden snickered. "mmmn I rest my case." 

"Stop it. It wasn't funny. It was horrifying." Raiden was still laughing. 

"I still think your lawyer was secretly a werewolf." 

"Oh my god." 

"Her name was Warwilf. From Werwulf, Warwilf, Wurrwlf, and Hruh." 

"Y-you shouldn't make fun of her name." 

"You mean Joan? But that's such a ludicrous name!" 

"Why are you like this, you weirdo?" Raiden leant forward and faced Monsoon head-on, smiling to match his verbal opponent. They both beamed at each other, then Raiden closed his eyes and bent his head for the kind of huffing chuckle that conceded defeat. Monsoon kissed him. 

It took too long for a peck, but didn't move lips or last as long as a proper kiss. It was like a shark bite, the taste to distinguish surfboard from seal. Raiden came out of it breathless from surprise, and blushing. Monsoon licked his charcoal lips, then they hung open slightly, primly, around his gleaming front teeth. The soulless lenses of his eyes without helmet or connecting cord caught a beady sort of night light from the basement window. Raiden wasn't sure— 

"You are sexy," Monsoon said, then lay his face over Raiden's again. He moved his lips against the other man's until he had to hiss in a breath. 

"Am I," Raiden murmured before he surrendered to the kiss. 

Yet in surrender, while his lips moved along with tiny strings in his throat, his body rounded Monsoon's and his right thigh crashed onto the floor and spread a two waves of black and red metal beside it. He grabbed the long white hair within reach, and growled while biting at skin bleached by death. Their noses clashed, and brows too. He extricated his fingers from Monsoon's hold so that he could grab the man's hip, praying to keep it in place against his own. Raiden pressed forward; Monsoon gasped before going limp and opening his mouth further. They fell onto the floor at the far side of the punching bag, just inches from the electrical socket. The outlet's faces looked on in shock. 

Raiden's body undulated over Monsoon's and in their motion made a grinding racket. Their kisses exchanged tongues and moans like life-giving, life-burning oxygen. Monsoon's hands and arms could not be stilled. The red ringed magnets roamed along Raiden's body, cool and scintillating when they pulled at every scrap of iron and nickel holding him together. Even the cobalt in his gamma sterilisation drive sizzled under the magnet's force. As his body was made of machinery puppeted by magnets and electrons and much as levers and springs, Raiden twitched and slid and jammed and rumbled and FELT under Monsoon's monstrous touch. 

It was sex where Raiden felt his thoughts had no control over his body, even while he held Monsoon's head and torso down mercilessly. He squeezed fingers as a vice around unyielding black armour and banged his hips into cinnabar and steel. His partner outgrew groans, too wound up in whatever sensations assaulted him to do anything but whine and stutter like an unoiled gate over gravel. He moved his fingers around scarred neck flesh. He felt where he'd killed his partner once before. When Monsoon grabbed his ass and his legs kicked without his command, when the room lit up red between their faces, he opened his eyes. 

Monsoon was stretching and congealing below. The body melted along Lorentz lines in the honeyed way of arousal. The legs tightened their articulation so they locked around Raiden's waist to trap the two men crotch to crotch. The false eyes hid as black pits under cobwebs of hair Raiden's fervour had pulled into place. The tooth-slashed smile remained. 

"Shall we move upstairs?" Monsoon suggested. 

"I— yes." Raiden bit his lip, tucked hair behind his ear. He was hard behind his armour. Further back, he was wet too. He'd looked upon a mobile mortuary and lusted. It was too late for his soul. 

Twenty-one parts lifted Raiden into a kiss, a full body embrace, then lurched up the stairs. Monsoon's feet were still on the floor, at odd angles to each step that pushed the cocoon around Raiden higher. Brass held up the railings, useless for their advance. Raiden reached behind him when they reached the top. The door handles in this house were all steel to suit its occupants, but he opened the basement door anyway. Anything to hurry their progress to the bedroom, and anything to keep Monsoon's hands squeezing on his gluteal cords and shocking his abdominal pickups. Approaching the second set of stairs between them and the bed, Monsoon licked Raiden's neck and said, "Think about how you want me before we arrive." While he kissed and licked lower, around the ribs and down the spine, still lumbering upward over singing pine steps, Raiden shuddered at what those words promised. Climb, climb to the top of the stairs, and when you take me you will see that when you come, you will come from a height no man will ever reach. 

Finally, Monsoon deposited Raiden on the marital bed. He shot his parts back into place, straddling Raiden's hips as they'd once done long ago, but without double fisting murder sais this time. It was pleasantly nostalgic, but only because Monsoon had perched on Raiden like this during threesomes since then, usually without weapons. Raiden realised that they hadn't actually had sex with just one another before. They'd had sex alone with Sam tied up in the closet, but that was definitely not the same thing. That was more like, well actually literally like, having a threesome with someone who was slightly farther away for cuckoldry fetish purposes. Was their action now a betrayal, or was their third simply much, much farther away? Neither of them thought on it. 

Monsoon sat astride Raiden, his hips and fractured spine rolling. Hair still hung as a cobwebbed veil over his eyes, highlighting his mouth. Just like they'd first met. He still wore the same body, and the same defunct words. His body was already etiolated when they'd met, the voice already scratched by jade and indulgence, and the black soul already wizened. Whatever wrinkles time added, Raiden falsely remembered from before. He couldn't grow shorter, or change his component shapes, or move muscles less dextrously, or reduce his reach and strength, or break a leg in any other line than that intended. His self never changed, only unfolded. Every new aspect of himself that fell off his mind's flower fit the symmetry of the whole. Monsoon was timeless. 

Raiden struggled to stay whole when the world changed him. That was his self-assessment. Looking up at Monsoon, he saw a floating sort of stability, and a heartless comfort. He wondered if Monsoon were a genie Sam had caught in a bottle; one day the glass would smash through no-one's fault and he'd fly away on his smokeless flame to weave all the same spells on another darkened doorstep. He'd laugh when thinking about the men who'd caught him, and the wishes he'd granted without them asking. Like he always said, nothing really mattered to him. The immortal, unchanging, ever twisting Monsoon. Here, Raiden was bedding a force of nature. 

If Monsoon were to know what Raiden thought of him then, he'd laugh even harder for how wrong he was. Over fifty years, and he'd changed so much. He'd lost so much. Only a sustained miracle kept him alive, and only a sustained miracle preserved memories of what he cherished most. He'd forgotten his parents' faces already. He hated how he'd changed. His duties twisted his clockwork cloud every morning. Without what he was expected to do, what he was would fade into mist. But no matter what set it in motion, adapting, repressing, ever twisting was how a storm survived. He could not stop being Monsoon. 

"How do you want me?" Monsoon asked. His field flared around him gaudily in fuchsia, and his body ground down like sin. He bent so his hands grabbed onto the edges of Raiden's glass chest plates. His breath hit Raiden's nose, warm and expectant. 

"I want to be in—" Raiden swallowed around the barest hint of uncertainty in his tone. He grabbed the guard of Monsoon's crotch, palm firm over the red barcode. "I want to take you." 

Monsoon spread his arms and smile. "I'm yours." 

In a whirlwind of muscle, Raiden had him pinned. He pulled down hard on the crotch guard, so it came off in his hands without protest. He kicked out his thighs for leverage, so those under him tightened again around his waist. He kissed the mouth below, so it opened for him and let him set the pace. Knuckles dragged down Raiden's side with careful appreciation. Their chests touched coldly, but chevrons came apart and pivoted upward to compensate for the heaving of absent laboured breaths. Raiden caught Monsoon's ribcages, and rubbed them with misplaced fondness for another shape. Monsoon could never give him softness there, or anywhere below except where Raiden's erection pressed. 

While they continued the day's kiss, and their wordless conversation that led hands and hips, Raiden grew firmer and Monsoon wetter. The thing Doktor had installed in Monsoon was a prim peacemaker, and a stopgap for further desires. He'd wanted exactly his own parts back, he'd told the Doktor. That could never happen, he told the Doktor. Considering what paltry neural connections he had left that weren't taken up by magnets, Doktor sadly agreed. So he went under the knife for a vagina fit for two. He only got it to manipulate Sam and Raiden. Or to please them, if one wanted to be kind. 

It had nothing to do with him as a man. Raiden had one behind his phallus, and it didn't make him less of a man. It didn't make Raiden less of a man to thrill at Sam's intrusion. It didn't make Raiden less of a man to strap toys onto Monsoon's hips and order that penetration while Sam set the rhythm from behind. Therefore it had nothing to do with Monsoon as a man if he took them both inside him, or one at a time, or finally rubbed himself in the dry shower stall without having to use a kitchen magnet when the kids and fathers were finally, finally at summer camp. 

All the same, when Raiden pushed into Monsoon's milky wet lips, and Monsoon breathed in a hiss at the wonderful stretch and had to clench at his hair just a little, the penis passed a small burnt-in birthmark sitting on his left-hand labia majora. Just so it would resemble what he'd lost to the tiniest fraction. The pleasure was sort of like his glans turned outside-in, mixed with the blooming sensation of a properly teased prostate. He was always being touched there, always having his delicate sensors pushed around by Raiden. He was also pretty sure that wasn't what actual vaginal penetration felt like for women, but from the very first stroke he'd taken inside, he decided not to complain. The feeling made him pant, shuffle, and squirm. He would feel so loose all over that hearing Raiden's thrusts clack his magnets together never surprised him. Perhaps he played it up a bit for an audience, and groaned too eagerly at the beginning, but he'd never blame himself for that deception either. Sam and Raiden both loved it. 

Raiden moved in a heat over Monsoon with those soldier's eyes. His pretty face grew serious and his lowered voice burnt molasses and gravel from true groin-deep exertion. He glared and thrust like a man instead of the scared Liberian boy he hid behind. Not a trace of confusion laced his actions. He controlled his quickening pace, and ruled every black place his hands grasped. His silver claws held on and dug into seams as tight as Monsoon's pseudo-muscular clamps locked down and vibrated the thick and juicy silicone slipped between the two mechanisms designed to trick the two men into making love. Their parts were false, and juices and scents squirted from canisters that needed to be refilled by nanos if not by hand, but the atavistic act of copulation made the brains attached to machines feel alive. It felt real. Raiden's face twisted in pleasure, and his plating twitched around blaring fans, and lust tightened his voice. As Raiden's real tongue poked out over titanium lower teeth, wet flesh just barely covering his conceit, Monsoon saw in him the rakish man that had taken Rosemary and brought life to John. Surrounded by soft flesh, Raiden made love like a lion. 

Monsoon regretfully and gloriously came. A long cry bled from his throat while his body thrashed at the sheets below, then rumbled and shone until it came apart. He lost control over his pleasured parts, focusing only on the sense of being filled that pervaded each and every sliced portion of his being. Rugged dick was pushing inside his thighs, his arms, his gullet, his breast, his ankle, his liver, his voice box. His vaginal torsion ripped a shout from Raiden. The man grabbed the upper magnet of his hip and entered it harder, faster. Inside the memories of Monsoon's muscles, and within the reality of his clenching heat, he was ribbed and knocked as an arrow to shoot pleasure straight between the ribs and into the heart. It was neurons misfiring, he was sure. It was wrong to feel Raiden's head pressing against his aorta, his shaft through the meat of his legs, and to come again from that. But he was a wicked man already. Monsoon felt no compunction while bodily riding Raiden's desire. 

After the third orgasm, Raiden's unsatisfied blind thrusts sounded like churning butter, but Monsoon was utterly strung out and disorganised. The continued stimulation in his overflowing vagina was slightly pleasurable, but horrid tingling at his joints pressed him to stop. He was aware his right hand was somewhere near Raiden's butt. His left was tangled in his hair as if squeezing his temples could have helped him control the good feelings he got when being filled. Something was building inside him again, all pooled down in his fake cervix, and he wondered how long Raiden had been pounding away, because number four was going to come in a sort of comforting whole body shiver. Raiden couldn't have felt all that good while laying his weight on slightly separated pieces of angular torso, but Monsoon appreciated the kisses, licks, and whimpers centred at the sensitive neck space under his left ear-box. Raiden was fully engorged, and somehow harder than the steel the rest of him was made of, and the surprisingly delicate construction of his penis was somehow throbbing inside Monsoon's slick walls until they both were stretched to bursting. Raiden hit Monsoon just right while touching that nub outside. Monsoon remembered politely to scream "Raiden" and not "Jack" when he tripped over the walls of release for the fourth time. 

Then Monsoon's right hand pulled back on Raiden's hips and his left untangled from his hair to push against his partner's silver clavicle. His arms and legs wobbled into proper place, with great effort. His labia kissed disgustingly at Raiden's penis when it was pulled from them. Pearlescent white that could have been robot cum or robot blood or robot lube seeped out afterward. It smelled delicious, a thick odour that hung even on his tongue, so he figured out it was his own internal "female" cyborg cum. Science wanted to make oral fun, after all. He was a fan. 

Raiden bit at Monsoon's Adam's apple. 

"Sensitive," Monsoon explained. He trailed his fingertips down the bumps of Raiden's remaining spine. He wasn't angry, it meant. His other hand fit around Raiden's dick and started stroking. It was so hot and heavy in his hand. He wondered if he'd really gotten a hunger for a man's big, hard penis after all these years. 

"Sorry," Raiden routinely responded while kissing down to the tip of Monsoon's red lines. They both knew the sex wasn't actually over. 

"I want to eat your pussy." 

"I want that too." Raiden's lips pressed at the dip under Monsoon's ribcage, then down to the first pair of abs. He looked up coquettishly, daring or begging to be pushed into position. A tabi-split foot pressed into Raiden's crouched abdomen. 

"Then get on your back, J—" Monsoon remembered it was too late to taunt the man. Not right then. Jack was for play, not comfort. "You jerk." 

With dragon help, Raiden settled onto his back. He propped his head on a folded pillow to get a good look at the bad man advancing between his legs. He could see Monsoon already licking his lips. The knowledge that this pleased them both made Raiden's dampening quim give a tiny quiver. 

That was all the invitation Monsoon needed to lick up from bottom to top of the folded slit, then run his tongue tip around the little bud of flesh that held all of the same potential as the large length rising above. He curled his tongue around the clit while two fingers pet and pulled at the entrance below. His mouth sucked; his fingers entered. Raiden cried out, overwhelmed. 

Monsoon let his fingers sit just inside Raiden while his tongue licked all around the tasty lips and wet pink flesh everywhere else. He kissed and mouthed at the vulva. He ran the soft bumps of his lips parallel to the labia and teasingly slow. He licked over and over, unrelenting until Raiden made a noise, then changed into mutating forms of lingual attrition. The blade of his tongue, the smooth bottom, the stringy tendons, the plush tip, the rougher papillae at back, all had a part in pleasuring Raiden's lips and clit. Below, while Monsoon's thumb rubbed at the bottom of the labia and soft perineum, the two fingers in Raiden pressed deeper. Raiden's walls welcomed them in. 

Deeper, deeper Monsoon pressed, stretched, and twisted. He hooked his fingertips at the spot where Raiden's false womanhood met a vestige of his real manhood where it clung to his remaining spine. Raiden keened and covered his face for a moment. His thighs tightened, finally boxing in Monsoon's head. Monsoon repeated the stimulation, then scissored his fingers as they danced away. On the next stroke, three entered, all the way down to the knuckles at his palm. As he turned them inside, reaching past the special spot, Raiden babbled sounds that caught in is throat before they could become words. Monsoon's licks around the labia had stilled, focusing more to kiss the clit or nuzzle it with his nose while cooing. His soft sounds coaxed the clit further out of its housing, whereupon he took it in his mouth. Soft lips cushioned over teeth, and his tongue rolled, licked, trilled, poked and sucked until Raiden screamed. But it wasn't over yet. 

Letting up on the assault to the clit, Monsoon kept to only the softest licks and sucks on it while the fingers of his free hand pet Raiden's pussy outside. Inside, his three fingers thrust at an even metre, pulling fragrant moisture and tentative squeezes from the bashful flesh. When Raiden was fully slick and needily squeezing, Monsoon entrusted the clit to his upper lip, then he slid in his tongue. It was long, and strong, and never tired of licking Raiden's walls or lapping up his slick. 

Far away, Raiden moaned around each exhale, eyes closed tight. His thighs shook from pleasured exertion, and his feet pushed against what slight purchase they could find in the smoothly raised magnets in Monsoon's back. Both of his hands shoved the source of his joy into his crotch by the hair. His hips began to buck and roll. Monsoon's tongue rolling inside him felt so inhumanly good. The man's entire mouth was eating him out mercilessly, while hands squeezed his dick. Decades of practice weren't fair to Raiden's bouncing hips. As if born to give a pussy pleasure. 

"I'm gonna—" Raiden moaned while his shoulders shook and his back arched. 

Monsoon drove his tongue in faster, working with the in and out of the passage pushed against it. He aimed at Raiden's spot while thumbing the weeping glans far above. 

"I'm— gonna— come—" Raiden hissed. His legs tightened almost into a neck lock. He felt Monsoon breathe even harder through his nose, making the air rush past his sensitive clit. 

Monsoon unclamped his mouth from Raiden's pussy. He took an even bigger breath through nose and dripping mouth. His mouth fastened around Raiden's clit and both of his hands squeezed and wrung out Raiden's shaft. 

"Gonna come, gonna come! Coming! Coming, oh god, I'm coming!" Raiden clamped down and shook. 

Fluid under pressure squirted from Raiden's tight slit. It hit Monsoon's neck hot and hard, streaming over and over. More settled onto Monsoon's fingers and hair thanks to gravity, cum having issued in a copious river from Raiden's cock. Raiden was drawn into a curl, muscles contracting tightly, and he panted over Monsoon's head. His heaven lasted perhaps a full minute, sitting in his floating weightless sort of happiness while Monsoon still sucked, held in place by grateful hands. 

One of Monsoon's hands started tugging at the back of Raiden's head, taking a clawed fistful of hair. His feet were pushing at Raiden's jaw and forehead. Raiden opened his eyes, shooed the indoor shoes away, and of course let go of the head below. 

Monsoon fell off Raiden's crotch with a giant gasp, or as giant as his tiny lungs could handle. The beady cameras in his eye sockets whirred almost audibly in and out to find focus. He could feel their tiny gears whizzing by deep into his sinuses while oxygen returned to his brain. His digestive tract felt full of Raiden's cum, just absolutely bloated from the amount he'd drunk. It was probably an accurate assessment. Still, he had a dedication to completionism, or to fairness in ejaculate. He wiped some pseudo-semen out of his hair and ate it right in front of Raiden's recovering face. He swallowed around two fingers, drew them out slowly, spindled a line of spittle in between. Said, with a smile in his voice but none yet ready for his exhausted face, "Gochisousama." 

Raiden smiled. He was being patronised, and it was working. He patted Monsoon's cheek. They were both nodes. Er, nerds. 

"Need me to, uh... eahhhw," he yawned, "return the favour?" 

"You sound like you need sleep." 

"Yeah but... eauhghm... did you have three or four?" 

"You're a robot. Don't let your dick take it out of you like this," Monsoon teased. He was pulling himself back together around Raiden's flagging body. His last sections pushed Raiden over to the clean and dry side of the queen size bed. He'd be out of it from stress soon. 

"I'm a man..." 

"I know. Sleep like humans do." Monsoon brushed the sweaty platinum strands out of Raiden's eyes and mouth. He then bounced off the bed and undid the lock on the cabinet night stand. "Mind if I borrow your vibe to jack off to my dead wife in your bathroom?" 

"Mmmnhgnglamng." Raiden just answered sounds with sounds, most of his brain cascading into shutdown. 

"Figured, baby." Monsoon blew a kiss to Raiden's sleeping form while his other hand grasped the generous form of the house's purple shimmer knobbed vibrator. He turned off the nightlight with his toe. The old brownstone was so dark inside without it. Only slats of streetlight dappled the floorboards like palm leaves broke the forest sun. He smelled heady sex in the air, and still tasted a woman's love in his mouth. Without breaking the spell, he walked to the bathroom and fingered his clit. 

Very soon within the week, the hospital let Raiden back in its doors because it couldn't keep a concerned husband on the verge of happy tears away from his no longer in surgery and therefore clamouring to go home husband. Sam and Raiden held each other so tight, they seemed ready to break the hospital bed instead of bones through some transitive magical power. They held each other's cheeks under matching blushes, and kissed with guileless toothy mouths, and let their tears mingle until neither one could tell who started so they could forget that it happened. There was a lot of "I thought you were going to die," and "I missed you so much, bonito," and "when does Sam come home," and "when DOES me, Sam, come home," and other worried pleasantries. The conversation moved on to the children: very well behaved and missing you so much and Vanna picked flowers for you and of course they'll come visit after school. They then bickered about whether Sam was allowed near bridges again ("It was an ACCIDENT, blondie, and I should have better dodged it.") which ended in another round of very tender kisses while Monsoon watched the one petal on a daisy that was just this close to falling. 

"So were you good too while I was gone?" Sam finally asked. His thinning eyes and curving lips expected a good answer. 

"Well I... made a mess in the basement," Raiden admitted. 

"He tore open the punching bag and filled your gym bag with rocks, which he also punched," Monsoon elaborated. 

"And I broke your bottle of sandalwood oil," Raiden blushed a bit, but he had a feeling Sam would forgive him. 

"You did?" Sam asked. He was just a little upset. More sad about missing out on massages in the future. But as predicted, his feelings melted. His hand covered Raiden's. "What's important is that you are unharmed. Did the glass get between your joints?" 

"No, Sam. I'm sorry anyway." 

"Mhm, you're forgiven." 

"Heh, you're always too soft on me." 

"That's because you're a soft boy." 

"I'm no—" 

Monsoon broke into their open flirting instead of excusing himself to go home like a regular human being: "Also we engaged in coitus on Wednesday night." 

"Monsoon!" Raiden squeaked angrily, trying to keep his voice hush. Behind his angry face, Sam's was breaking out into a sunshine smile. Monsoon began to count their acts on his fingers. 

"We kissed, then he entered me vaginally, then I ate him out. For mutualism, that's about it." 

"AH-HA!" Sam exclaimed happily, slapped Raiden on the back, and then mussed his brown hand into blonde hair until the motion brought their faces close enough to touch noses. "I am so proud of you. You got up to all that without me. That is so..." Sam searched for a superlative, but got lost in Raiden's blue eyes instead. "HOT! You will tell me all about it when I get home, in detail." His voice dropped to a saucy whisper into Raiden's blush-red ear. "In so much detail. Every moment you writhe under him. Every thrust you make in his pussy with that big manly dick of yours." 

"Sam..." Raiden tried to shake his head out of Sam's grip, ready to increase the motion so he could vibrate out of existence. 

"Every time you tighten up and lose control, and moan prettily like you do for me. But I was trapped here. And yet you had such pleasure." Sam let his hand slide down to Raiden's jaw so he could angle their mouths together. Amid the hospital beeps, they kissed. Sam let go. "Your happiness is my kink." 

Raiden tried smiling. He tried closing his eyes against the truth of Sam's love. Nothing helped as his hands pulled weakly at Sam's hospital gown, as if feeling it and —oh, feeling Sam grab his plated forearm under his hoodie sleeves— as if that could ground him instead of rocketing his heart rate into space. 

"How do I put up with your dumb, horny speeches?" Raiden scoffed lovingly. 

"Dot wikihow dot com," Monsoon whispered likewise. 

Raiden kicked him in the leg before he could move it away. 


	8. All Is as It Should Be

A lot had happened. Monsoon was drifting through a tiny ventilation vent because no one else could. His body followed cat logic. He'd told Sam and Raiden to come get him if he wasn't back in an hour. That would be long enough to scout the barely protected base for signs of his kidnapped children. Their kidnapped children; close enough. It figured that war would come home to Denver eventually. A decade had really been too long for peace. Almost like statistically begging for a breakout. So they'd ganged up against probably evil, and Sam and Raiden got to bond over eviscerating enemy cyborgs again, and Monsoon got to control a Metal Gear again, so it was really fun for all. Except the dead soldiers in the lookout whose clothes and telescopic night helmets now adorned Sam and Raiden. Just wait an hour. He'd be back, and they could coördinate the assault then. 

Infiltration seemed to be going terribly and sinisterly easy until the latest grate Monsoon had been peering through fell out under him. In the split second that followed, he was already figuring out how to reattach the metal before it fell to the floor, in which case no one would be the wiser apart from the sound. Instead, the empty room flared to life, a blonde white lady came out from under optical camouflage, and then immediately speared him with an actual spear. She caught him through the jaw and brain cord, just under the cerebellum. It was a really impressive and clean shot. Wood and obsidian, he realised, since he hadn't instinctually turned away steel, and the cut was so clean and thin. Her intense eyes and sharp nose reminded him of some really old British actress he'd seen in a retrospective recently. John had wanted Curry Français on Sunday. Wow, his neck hurt. Oh right, death. 

Wasn't coming yet. Always. Always his luck. The woman hurried his head through the facility like Vlad Dracul. They reached some mixture of a server room and dentist's office. She stripped his helmet, then strapped his head into place between a vice, and then stuck all sorts of needles and wires directly into his cranium. Some guy was sitting at the side in a chair with big wheels. Called a, noun, can I get a uhhhhh... Too hard to think while she slapped a hedgehog thingy into his spinal cord. Things were getting pretty dark on the edges of his vision, like one of those Mega Man NT Warrior videos on YouTube with a giant shadow/bloom plus 15° tilt copyright dodge slapped on with natural 1.25x speed zoom and uploaded at only 140p. That's a very specific æsthetic. Oh dammit was that going to be his last thought? 

And there, as the cockles and conches spread out their cold white enamel between milky sea and sky made only of unending stars, as the porcelain vines and wisteria grew up from him as moss and the plum blossoms fell for snow, as the hundred million garudas mounted bearing flowers and vases and unending clamorous song, as the carved ziggurats and tasselled parasols mounted level by level both ever expanding and ever turning, as the dead monks spoke tintinnabulation and wore the skin of river quartz, as the fresh silk sheets enclosed his body tightly and embroidered his skin, as he felt invisible rain pelt and soak his overgrown body with the force of daggers felt equally on face and silk and flower all now integrally part of him, there, as the Buddha unfolded atop it all in fugilin lightless kṛsna black, he heard it.  
Tbong's voice called, "Phirun." 


	9. Stains of Jizz, a Bonus Chapter

"It didn't make Raiden less of a man to strap toys onto Monsoon's hips and order that penetration while Sam set the rhythm from behind."  
An illustration from a draft of this fic where Sam also had a pussy and entered in the flashback from the front instead of behind. If this interests the fic's requester, I will HAPPILY revert and edit the appropriate chapters.  
  
"That was more like, well actually literally like, having a threesome with someone who was slightly farther away for cuckoldry fetish purposes."  
Pictured here, a scene of Sam being a kinkster, and Raiden intentionally acting OOC just to rustle and raise those jimmies. You know, normal happy super in love gay cyborg couple stuff.  



End file.
